BEYOND ONLY WATCH SATURNO — Between Graffiti,Haute Horlogerie and Contemporary Art

Spanish contemporary artist Saturno first came to GEN DE ART through a wristwatch: the DC7 Genesis Piece Unique created with independent watchmaker David Candaux for Only Watch. From that encounter emerges a wider portrait shaped by cinema, graffiti, hip-hop culture, craftsmanship, the art market and a persistent refusal to let a new territory erase an old one.

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ONLY WATCH AND THE DC7 GENESIS

In 2021, Saturno collaborated with independent watchmaker David Candaux on the DC7 Genesis Piece Unique, created for Only Watch, the charity auction supporting research into Duchenne muscular dystrophy. D.Candaux × Saturno was among the collaborations presented in the 2021 edition, and the unique watch was sold in Geneva for CHF 150,000.

The project brought two distinct forms of craftsmanship into the same object. Candaux developed the watch and its mechanical architecture, while Saturno designed the Genesis dial and fully hand-painted the dedicated presentation box. The DC7 Genesis is organised around a pronounced 12-to-6 o’clock axis: a biplanar flying tourbillon sits at 12 o’clock, the balance is inclined by 30 degrees, and a retractable crown is positioned at 6. The dial itself is inclined by three degrees toward the wearer for improved readability. Its titanium movement comprises 189 components and 28 jewels while weighing just 24 grams.

For Saturno, the task was therefore not simply to place an image on a watch. His visual language had to work inside an already highly articulated mechanical structure, where every millimetre carried both technical and aesthetic consequences.

TWO CREATORS, ONE GENESIS

The collaboration became more unusual when Saturno and Candaux discovered that, before meeting, each had independently been developing a project called Genesis. For Candaux, the title referred to origins, family heritage and three generations of watchmaking. According to Saturno’s official project notes, his own Genesis drew on Genesis 3:15, described there as “the seed of the woman”. The two approaches were separate before they became one project.

During our interview, Saturno traced his route toward the theme through cinema and personal research. He often played David Fincher’s Se7en while painting, sometimes listening rather than watching. Its literary and religious references led him toward further reading around Dante and related imagery; Genesis subsequently entered his own notes and drawings.

“They told me, ‘We can make something about Genesis.’ I said, ‘What? I’m working on Genesis right now.’”

By the time the collaboration was proposed, Saturno already had material in development. The theme was not simply assigned to him after the fact; two makers had arrived at the same word from different directions and then chose to build something together.

THE SAME MOVIE, A DIFFERENT SCREEN

Moving from a monumental wall to a watch dial might appear to require an entirely different artistic mentality. Saturno sees it differently.

“It’s like watching the same movie on a phone or in a theatre. It’s the same movie.”

For him, scale changes the amount of information that can be carried, but not the fundamental act of creation. A large painting or mural can absorb secondary details; a watch demands immediate visual clarity. Saturno compared the problem to logo design: the principal form has to register at first glance, while smaller details can reveal themselves only when the viewer looks more closely.

The distinction is important. Saturno did not enter haute horlogerie by inventing a more restrained or more “luxurious” version of himself. The format changed; the underlying visual language did not.

THE BOY BEHIND THE CREATURES

Long before the watch, there was cinema. Saturno grew up in Spain surrounded by movie posters, VHS covers, horror and science-fiction films, action cinema and arcade games. These images formed an informal education in composition, colour and atmosphere.

He remembers standing in a cinema lobby with his father at the age of seven, looking at a poster and telling him that one day he wanted to be the person who made images like that. His explanation of artistic influence remains characteristically direct: artists paint what they spend their lives looking at.

The strange beings and highly detailed imaginary forms that later became associated with Saturno’s work are therefore not simply symbols of darkness or aggression. He is equally interested in the culture of making behind them: concept artists, sculptors, puppet makers, animatronics, robotics and practical-effects teams who built cinematic worlds through material, engineering and handwork.

“For me, each image represents all this stuff.”

That fascination creates an unexpected bridge to watchmaking. A mechanical watch and a cinematic creature may belong to different worlds, yet both can conceal extraordinary amounts of labour behind a finished surface. Saturno is drawn not only to what is visible, but to the network of skills and decisions that made the visible object possible.

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BEYOND THE LABEL: GRAFFITI WRITER AND CONTEMPORARY ARTIST

The most revealing tension in Saturno’s identity appears when he is asked how he defines himself today. In a professional context, he prefers “contemporary artist” or “neo-contemporary artist”. He is fully aware that, in parts of the art market, the word graffiti can still trigger assumptions about illegality or vandalism before the work itself is considered.

“I consider myself more a graffiti writer than a street artist.”

The two positions are not mutually exclusive. “Contemporary artist” describes the context in which his work now circulates; “graffiti writer” describes the culture from which he believes he emerged. Saturno began painting graffiti as a teenager and recalls being active within a wider hip-hop environment that also included DJing and breakdance. In his own understanding, graffiti is not simply painting outdoors. It carries histories, codes and forms of belonging.

What he wants to move beyond is not graffiti itself, but the restriction of being understood through a single category. His practice now extends across paintings, large-scale walls, commissions and collaborations, yet he may still go out with friends and paint with no commercial purpose. He compares it to a professional footballer playing casually with friends at the weekend: professional value does not eliminate the possibility of doing the same activity simply because one loves it.

At the same time, Saturno understands the market. He knows that a collector who has paid a substantial price for a work may not immediately understand why the same artist paints elsewhere for free. Rather than pretending that tension does not exist, he lives inside it: entering the contemporary art market without allowing that market to rewrite the culture from which he came.

ARTIST AS BRAND, ARTIST AS HISTORY

Saturno is equally direct about the market itself.

“Each artist is a brand.”

For him, however, a brand only matters when there is something behind it. In the interview he repeatedly returned to the idea that collecting an artwork means acquiring more than an image. Technique matters, but so do the experiences and decisions that produced the work.

“For me, it’s fifty-fifty: technique and history.”

Cinema, graffiti, hip-hop, years of painting, mistakes and changes of direction all become part of what the collector encounters in the finished piece. Saturno does not see his past as something to conceal in order to enter a different market. In his own value system, that history is part of the work.

WHAT AI CANNOT REPRODUCE

The same argument shapes Saturno’s view of artificial intelligence. He does not approach AI primarily as a threat. Instead, he sees it as a force that will make the difference between reproducible execution and individual practice more visible.

“If you don’t bring something special to the table, you disappear.”

He accepts that AI can already generate sophisticated fantasy imagery rapidly and inexpensively. For image-makers whose value rests largely on technical execution, he expects greater pressure. But his central argument returns to personal history.

“It’s only the packaging.”

Saturno’s point is not that technique has become irrelevant. He remains committed to technical improvement. Rather, he believes that as appearances become easier to reproduce, lived experience, cultural origin, judgement and long-term direction may become more important, not less.

THE PRICE OF CREATIVE FREEDOM

For someone who speaks so openly about brands, collectors and commercial positioning, Saturno’s definition of artistic freedom is strikingly simple.

“I like painting because I like painting.”

What he dislikes is the moment when financial pressure begins making decisions before the artist does — when the first question is whether a painting will sell, or whether one direction will be more popular than another. He does not romanticise the artist’s life: income, studio costs and everyday obligations are real. The difficulty lies in protecting a space where those pressures do not determine every creative decision.

That is the deeper thread running through Saturno’s career. From graffiti walls to paintings, from cinematic creatures to the few centimetres of the DC7 Genesis dial, his path is not a clean transition from one identity to another. It is an accumulation. He wants to move beyond the limitations of the graffiti label without losing the graffiti writer within him; he accepts that an artist can become a brand while insisting that the brand is empty without lived history behind it.

The DC7 Genesis brought Saturno into the world of independent haute horlogerie. Its deeper significance, however, lies in what it reveals about the artist himself: entering a new world does not require erasing the old one.