How I obtained right here: Fvckrender
Five years ago, Frederic Duquette started uploading a new picture to his Instagram account @fvckrender every day after teaching himself the pros and cons of Cinema 4D through YouTube tutorials. Less than three months later, he received his first contract and has since worked with artists such as Tokimonsta and Lil Nas X as well as brands such as Dior and Supreme.
Nowadays, Duquette has over 300,000 followers and publishes a new piece every day – only seven of them were missing in the last five years – and often creates works that blur the lines between real and dreamlike images. Aside from the impermanence of Instagram, Duquette experiments with murals and sculptures and publishes an upcoming monograph, Surrealista, published by Volume, devoted to the last five years of daily posts.
He tells CR how he changed his life with a battered MacBook Pro and discusses the pressure to be a hit on social media.
Become an artist I worked in a restaurant in Montreal and worked there for five, maybe six years. I was kind of bored and wanted to do something different and learn something. At first I didn't plan to work in any other area. My goal was to open a restaurant and work in this industry for a while, but I've always wanted to learn digital art and 3D. I'd never really been an artist before so I was just scared to learn. I left school when I was 17. I don't have a degree. I tried to apply for school but they turned me down because I didn't get the grades. So I started making a work of art every day to get better and after three months I started to find work. It was very quick. Realizing that I could do this for a living, I said, "Oh shit, I can go out of the restaurant and do art to pay my bills."