The artist
A French artist shaped by an international life.
Fabian PhiL
Originally from Paris, Fabian PhiL spent more than twenty-five years living and working across Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East before establishing his artistic practice in Dubai.
His early work with seismic waves left him with an enduring fascination for layers, movement and what lies beneath the surface—ideas that would later find an unexpected expression in his art.
Working across multiple sheets of transparent plexiglass, Fabian builds his portraits layer by layer. As the viewer moves, those layers shift in relation to one another, transforming the image with perspective.
Faces, expressive gazes, coloured glasses, provocative titles and familiar cultural icons have become recurring elements of a visual language designed not simply to be looked at, but experienced.
- Full name
- Fabian Philandrianos
- Based in
- Dubai, UAE
- Practice
- Kinetic pop art on layered plexiglass
The gaze, the movement, the story
The gaze is often the starting point. Eyes and expressions establish the first connection; movement changes what the viewer sees; titles introduce humour, ambiguity or provocation.
In the Pop Glasses works, colour alters the personality of the portrait. In the Wanted series, the language of the mugshot turns the subject into a character. Across the practice, the artwork continues to change through perspective, light and the position of the viewer.
“What interests me is the emotion behind a face — the eyes, the expression, the sense that something is about to move. I use transparency, light and layered images to give the portrait a changing presence.”
The artistic journey
01
The first painting — Borneo
Fabian painted his first work in 2003 on the island of Borneo, in the heart of the jungle. That first painting took him an entire year to complete and taught him the patience and commitment that art demands.
02
The Blue Lady — Africa
In 2011, seeking to translate his experience of three-dimensional seismic waves into painting, he painted the Blue Lady twice, slightly differently, on two plexiglass sheets, and discovered that vertical strokes created movement as the viewer moved around the work: the eyes seemed to follow, like the Mona Lisa. This became the foundation of his kinetic technique and the beginning of his own visual language.
03
Evolution — Dubai
In Dubai, his work expanded: he introduced colour through fluorescent glasses to amplify the gaze, developed triptychs around the 100-dollar bill, and combined digital creation with painting, cartoons and the world of Formula 1. In 2025, he introduced the world of pandas into Zen landscapes of temples, lakes and cherry blossoms.
Along the way he studied modern artists including Klasen, Delorme and Warhol, before finding his own voice through chance and experimentation.
Explore the work
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