Lausanne KNUT's bass player

so busy at the moment! cant find time tu upload anything…dont worry..they’re coming..i am working on it!

article by Georg Petris for PROXIMA KUNST VERBOTEN fanzine – issue nº2(translated from german by Nina Cifuentes)

XIDNOJ-JONDIX, black and grey surrealism in tattooing… (”10 easy and short questions”)

Underground artistic scenes like tattooing sometimes hide little jewels, and they aren’t easy to discover at first glance. Somebody mentioned his name during a Tool Backstage meet’n'grip a couple of years ago…. his technique, his ideas, no color, millions of dots, etc… everybody had heard about him, so I wrote down his name and started my research. He didn’t answer my e-mails but I insisted and finally he told me he didn’t like to do interviews. He even said to me that he doesn’t know “anything about nothing”, and added that “it’s all about good luck”.

First I thought he was working in New York, but I was wrong. he was born in Barcelona, Spain and that’s were he still resides today. He worked 7 years in a tattoo shop called LTW but he recently quit to pursue his own personal quest of balance in life.

Jondix is not his real name. He was drawing and painting all his life long. He’s very fond of his school art teachers Frau Ötling and Emil Tröger because they supported his “out of the box” thinking and because he understood strange dreams could be accepted in the artworld. Everything is art, everything is life, everything is life and also death, drawing and not drawing, playing music or not, tattooing or not tattooing. Some days ago I received the answer to our 10 “easy and short” questions:

1.-PKV: how did tattoo art enter your life? J: In the tattoo world I owe everything to Tas…He taught me technique and philosophy… Now he’s the bass player of Electric Wizard, my favorite band alive. He tattoos at Binnie’s INTO-YOU London, with Tomas Tomas one of the most original tattooers from the psychedelia.

2.-PKV: how do you define yourself? J: I am a walking contradiction. When I was 20 I was a satanist member, then I became buddhist, now I am nothing. I am free…but also a slave…but I still like tibetan buddhism…and Theosophy….

3.-PKV: Do your parents accept you as an artist? J: all humans are liars, we lie to ourselves. I’m not an artist. Artists are crazy, medically crazy and I’m not like this at the moment, I can only do some certain things that a few people like. I’m not even a tattooist just because I can do some tattoos. Everything is an illusion. Only death is real…and maybe also laughing

4.-PKV: Who is another important tattooist for you?

J: Mike the Athens is and will be my master. We are working on a little book together to be released in september.

5..-PKV: What were the most difficult or risky moments of your career?

J: There have been a lot…tattooing at Filip Leu’s shop and having him sitting next to you while you tattoo is like this film “Man on Wire”…

Also last year during the London and Milan Conventions I was working next to him in his booth and this was a big pressure for me.

I also remember when I did a little tattoo on Freddy Corbin’s face and I was so nervous….there have been many many stressfull ones…(laughs)

6.-PKV: I read on you website you are “on the road”, what does it mean?

J: After 7 years in LTW and after Tas left, I wanted to do things my way and that’s difficult in a place with so many different pesonalities working together, nice shop, some nice people, but not enough for me. Now I will do more conventions and visit my friend’s shops more often…And over all I will have more time for painting, designing stuff, having more fun…life is so short and time flies.

7.-PKV: Do you sometimes copy other tattooists, maybe unconsciously?

J: Yes, unconsciously, yes,of course, but I realized more and more that the reality of the imagination is almost identical to the reality that everyone sees – that the two are more or less the same.

8.-Do your customers always accept your designs?

J: It’s like dreaming: the dreamer cannot change his dreams. Maybe he can remember what he dreamt. But he doesn’t really know what it means. It’s another language

9..-PKV: What do you think of all the bad tattooists or like you called them before scratchers? Jacques Brel said “Le talent c’est l’envie de faire quelque chose (talent is the want to do something)”. This is it, so simple and so complex; difficulty lays on the power of your want.

10.-PKV: Why is tattooing still such an important way of expresion in our society? J: because there’s still dozens of amazing old-school tattooists in the world making the rules for the new generations: Binnie, Puente, Sylvia, Ciferri, Theo, Pacheco, Tin-Tin, Hardy, Whitehead, Horiyoshi, Grime, Xed, Roberts, Mick, Hernandez….and many more….

T.T.T