‘The surfers say, that board is so sick!’ French artist refurbishes a surfboard | Creation

A The surfboard is split in half making lobster pincers. Some look like exaggerating to take a stingray. A swimming pool with a net on the bottom, like a duck’s foot. And a fire red skateboard that looks like flames on wheels.

Both Lucas Lecacheur’s boats and skateboards push the boundaries of accepted tradition – and surprisingly, they all work too. Beachgoers on the French holiday island of Île de Ré, where Lecacheur grew up, are used to seeing his black skin on the sand, clutching it. The Brutalists – a large and very curved board – under his arm.

Lecacheur is a French artist who has been surfing since childhood. He spent many years as a rock musician, touring and touring with his underground band the Bad Pelicans. His experiments in surfboard design grew out of a lifelong desire to do things differently; to make his two greatest passions – exercise and surfing – and “reinterpret”.

“In rock’n’roll, I was always looking for new words, new energy,” he says. “I thought, how can I do surfing? What if I made a surfboard out of cow shoes? A guillotine swimming pool? A tyrant? A lobster?”

Lecacheur is in Australia as part of Melbourne making a weekend, living and working at the Upstairs gallery on Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street. When I go there to meet him, I enter a cave full of light. None other than Lecacheur. He’s wearing all black: leather jacket, cowboy boots, sunglasses. He plays the guitar, sitting near the windows. I shudder, realizing that she has created this image in anticipation of my arrival. It’s like a scene from a movie; I can’t help but appreciate the dedication.

Lecacheur spends six weeks in the house, sleeping on two mattresses on the floor. Nearby, old movie clips show scenes from a play he made about his past career. There are two Scarpa lounge chairs on the floor, next to the scattered vinyls. Pictures adorn all the walls, while the floor section has pictures of his various surfboards.

Although his surfboards are amazing, the designer tried to play with several of them, including the Brutalist and the beautiful, pearlescent ones. Medusa. “Medusa is very difficult because it has a big curved tail, everything is made of epoxy and there is no leash, so you have to be very careful,” he says.

“But otherwise it’s a beautiful feeling, to try something that no one else has tried. It feels like I’m starting again, having the feeling of the first wave”

How do other surfers respond to his boards? “It’s always an event on the beach.” I went to Bells beach this week with the board I just made. What is your Instagram? The band is so sick!

Lecacheur was born in Paris but grew up on the Île de Ré. His plans are made in the traditional way, in surf factories, and use traditional materials such as fiberglass. On the days he goes to an object to create his wood, Lecacheur wears one of his many clothes from the 80s and 90s such as Yves Saint Laurent, Armani and Givenchy, some picked up in vintage shops in Paris for 1 euro.

“When you wear it in a different way, you can have a different effect,” he explains. “Style and muscle.”

At Melbourne design week, Lecacheur designed two new surfboards. One, called Château Rouge, is a 10-foot-tall square with a bootboy nose and forked tail. Lecacheur describes the other as an Australian invention: “I tied an empty surfboard to a chain, tied it to a ute in the Australian bush, and drove the car, pulling it back. The board will be cast in resin to store all the trash collected in the wild.”

The exhibition also contains drawings and models of many experimental fins made by Lecacheur. These include the spiky metal fin called Total Mayhem, the terrifying Hook, and the aptly named Bat Fin no.6, which looks like a bat wing.

Lecacheur’s large and sharp Guillotine collection is now held in a museum in Tokyo. He has built a strong following in Japan and the US, and spends a large part of each year in both countries, with six months of the year on the road. Now he’s on a world tour – he was in Japan and Indonesia before Australia – and, in an unguarded moment, he admits it can be a lonely life. But that’s his dedication to his job.

“I believe if we go outside the box and explore, we can find something that can be a step forward, a step forward,” he tells me. “But somebody’s got to try, somebody’s got to do it. Otherwise you’re not going to change.”

In addition to his boards out there, Lecacheur is also behind the graphic series called White Fin Project: a tongue-in-cheek idea that allows him to connect the white fin of the surfboard to various objects, such as a grandfather clock, a board, a post box, an ATM, a bathroom mirror and even the Eiffel Tower. In his world everything can be in the swimming pool.

Before I asked her questions, I watched an Instagram video of her strapping the flipper to a chair, to the cheers of the assembled crowd. The film doesn’t make sense to me but when we meet the place: for a short time an ordinary object is transformed into a “magic car”, as Lecacheur says, “which helps people to dream a little”. It’s all part of his pushing the boundaries of art and design, and infusing his personality and creativity.

“It’s a quest,” says Lecacheur, a little sarcastically, as if aware that the comment’s determination belies his well-coordinated image. “I do this to help other people dream big and accept their ideas.”