By Antoine Renault
Growth Strategist | Branding expert | Board member | Artist. Ex-CMO at Kellogg's and Bose.
Carles invented this. Quarantine is a special week in a special place with special people. A week I will never forget.
I like to think people get into their “genius zone” when they find the intersection of passion, excellence and insatiable desire to learn.
Carles has found his genius zone with Quarantine.
A “product” that is hard to describe. Basically, it’s all about unlocking innovative minds. I suggest you read this interview first. But in case you can’t wait, here is how they try to explain the thing, and there how I told my experience of it.
Carles, tell us about your story first. What happened in your life before Quarantine?
When I was a kid, I loved painting. Not because someone told me to—because I needed to. By the time I was twenty, I was already making a living from it. I went to art school in Barcelona, but honestly, it just didn’t fit. The classes felt stiff, way too serious, totally out of sync with how I learned. Sure, I picked things up quickly—but I couldn’t stand being told how to learn. So I dropped out.
I decided to go solo. I studied my own way—reading, practicing, observing. I didn’t need a grade to know if something was good.
But there was a problem. In Menorca, no one was teaching what I wanted to learn. No one at the level I needed. So, I built it myself.
In 2016, I started Menorca Pulsar—an art retreat. I brought in top-tier artists from around the world to teach workshops. Word got out. Before long, we had people coming from everywhere to learn with us.
I learned a ton. Made some great friends. But still, something felt off. It felt like we were just entertaining people. Giving them a few tricks, letting them paint next to a master, spending a lovely week together… and that was it. It didn’t shake them. It didn’t go deep. It looked nice, but it was harmless.
And that wasn’t enough for me. So I started changing everything.
First with Jeremy Mann and Nadezda—we launched these wild bootcamps: twelve hours a day, no phones, deep in the countryside, with handpicked students. We didn’t teach technique—we taught mindset.
Then with Vincent Desiderio, we did something even weirder. We called it the “Anti-workshop.” It wasn’t about learning. It was about unlearning. About tearing yourself down. Dropping the act. And then with Sean Cheetham, we designed a ten-day, ten-hour-a-day workshop. Pure technique. No fluff, no academic posing. Just the stuff that works.
Out of all that, Quarantine was born. An island, a purgatory, an experiment. Nothing fixed. Nothing safe. A place where art isn’t taught. It’s confronted.
Any background in innovative entrepreneurship?
No, I don’t come from the business world. Or innovation. And I definitely don’t have any kind of business training. Excel freaks me out, schedules confuse me, and organization just isn’t my thing. I don’t know the first damn thing about business. And that’s actually an advantage. I’m a mess—but a functional one.
What I do have is an obsession. And a sharp intuition. And that’s enough for me. I read a lot—every day—but I don’t make plans. I don’t follow methods. I work from chaos, from the studio, from the gut.
Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned through painting. Watching. Listening. Feeling. That’s how I make decisions. Not because they make sense, but because something inside me says, “This is it.” That gut punch. That little voice that won’t shut up.
I don’t believe in plans. Or roadmaps. Or strategies. Nobody really decides with their head—not customers, not entrepreneurs. We all think we’re rational. We’re not. So I just roll with it. Like painting—you’re not in charge, the work is. And if you try to control everything, you kill the magic.
I don’t want to be Sisyphus, pushing the same rock up the hill every day. I’d rather be Proteus—shapeshifting, slipping away, becoming something else. If you’ve got a vision, an obsession, and a gut feeling, the rest falls into place. Because then it’s not you making the work—it’s the work making you.
And that goes for a painting—or a company.
How was the idea born? What problem were you trying to solve? For whom?
The first time I set foot on Lazaretto Island was in 2017. It wasn’t open to the public yet. I had no idea what to expect. But the moment I arrived, something shifted in me. It wasn’t imagination—it was real. The island had this strange energy, like it was speaking from another place.
After that visit, I kept dreaming about it. Again and again. And in four of those dreams, I saw very specific things. Not symbols—actual scenes of what could happen there. I wrote them down. And the idea started growing on its own—no effort, no plan. Just like it always does when I get obsessed with something.
There wasn’t a problem to solve. No target audience. No market research. Just a powerful feeling pulling me in. And the sense that this island could be way more than just a beautiful place. That it could be a tool. An emotional amplifier. Something that transforms anyone who sets foot on it.
That’s when it clicked: I could use that energy to unlock artists. To shake them out of their routine, their excuses, their comfort zone. I could create something so intense, no conventional training could come close.
It didn’t make sense to run a normal course in a place that’s anything but normal. So I turned it into something else. A place where ideas aren’t explained—they’re felt. Where painting isn’t taught—you’re taught how to see differently. And once you see differently, you act differently.
The island isn’t just the setting. It’s the engine. It’s the real teacher. I just channel what it stirs up. That’s Quarantine. An experiment, with the island as the tool. Like a massive musical instrument built to strike a nerve in whoever’s brave enough to step in.
Why did you believe this problem was an important one for your audience? How did you know?
This part was actually the easiest: I was the customer.
All I had to do was ask myself—what place, what experience, what conditions would truly help me break through? And the answer was already inside me. I knew it. I had felt it. It was almost physical.
From there, I fine-tuned everything through intuition. And when intuition didn’t give me a clear signal, I started playing—literally. I played with ideas like puzzle pieces. I flipped them, combined them, tested them without judging if they were good or bad. And if you play that game right, it starts to teach you things. It gives you clues. Opens up new paths.
Some of those games were simple but powerful. Switching roles. Thinking in reverse. Asking, “What if everything I believe is wrong?” Letting randomness guide me. Reversing cause and effect. Bit by bit, the map started drawing itself.
I didn’t need surveys or focus groups. I just had to listen—really listen—to what I needed. Because if I needed it, I knew I wasn’t the only one.
Tell us now about the design phase. What were the original critical features you had in mind? Format, duration, type of experiment, diversity of mentors, selection of artists …? What was non negotiable to make this innovation work.
Designing the program felt like putting together a puzzle without knowing what the final picture was supposed to be. Yeah, it was tricky—but also incredibly fun.
I didn’t follow a fixed plan. No roadmap. Just intuition, emotion, and one very clear direction: I knew exactly what I didn’t want to do. That’s where I started. I eliminated everything that already worked somewhere else. If an idea sounded too polished or too logical, I trashed it. If I found anything similar on Google, gone. I wasn’t interested in repeating formulas. I wanted something that didn’t exist.
I made a lot of decisions randomly—literally. I’d flip a coin and go with it. Or throw in absurd elements on purpose just to break the mold.
For four years, I pulled ideas from everywhere—books, philosophy, literature, science, religion. Anything that hit me hard. The more unrelated, the better. I forced them to coexist. And in that chaos, something started to take shape. It filled 800 pages. A total mess. Until one day, everything just clicked. Because when you’re obsessed and trust your gut, that moment always comes.
There was only one non-negotiable: The island. The island is the core, the instrument. Everything else revolves around it. The whole program is designed to amplify what the island already gives you—its energy, its history, its geography. The island is what makes this work. Without it, none of this would make sense.
Context is everything.
Now that you have completed 4 editions, how would you describe what this product does best to whom.
What Quarantine does best is shift how you see things—and build a community so strong, it almost doesn’t feel real.
From the very first edition, we saw something special happening. People didn’t just connect—they bonded. Not like in your average workshop. These were real ties. They started traveling together, writing to each other, curating shows, visiting one another.
Then we pushed it further. In the second edition, our goal was to build that kind of bond in just four days. We did it. Third edition? We aimed for day three—it happened on day two.
That’s not luck. Our selection process is razor-sharp. Not everyone gets in. We’re careful about who we invite because the island has to stay noise-free. That means no fans, no tourists, no clueless folks—and definitely no jerks.
This isn’t about filling seats. It’s about building the right group. And here’s how we do it:
- The website copy is the first filter. It’s not written to convince—it’s written to scare off the wrong people.
- Then comes the application. If someone fills it out without really understanding what we’re doing, they’re out—around 30% don’t make it past this step.
- Finally, there’s a 40-minute interview. That’s where we fine-tune. If there’s no openness, no hunger for change, they don’t get in either.
Everyone who does get in has one thing in common: They want to change. They’re ready to break from what they know—because what they know just isn’t working anymore. They’re stuck. And it’s never about technique. No one gets blocked because of technique. The block comes from how you think, how you see the world. And that’s what we dive into.
Quarantine brings those people together, drops them on an island, and gives them a wild context for transformation. And the most valuable thing they leave with? It’s not what they learn. It’s who they go through it with. The community. A tribe. A group of artists with the same fire.
Yeah, it sounds a little cheesy. But that’s exactly what happens.
Stepping back after those 4, what were the most interesting surprises, and the most insightful learnings.
The biggest surprise—hands down—has been how quickly people form rock-solid bonds. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else. And it happens every single time. It’s like Lazaretto speeds up human connection.
Another surprise? How artists respond to the challenges in the Art Lab. The tougher and more impossible they seem, the more fired up they get. That keeps pushing us to raise the bar—and it works. The hunger to grow is real.
But the most unexpected thing? The change doesn’t just hit the participants. It hits the mentors too—and hard.
Henrik Uldalen, Yuko Shimizu… they left moved. But what happened with Edward Povey and Phil Hale was next level.
Phil Hale turned down my invites for four years. Finally, he agreed to a call just to say no. But something happened during that conversation—he ended up saying yes. When he came, the island hit him deep. He saw his own blocks mirrored in the artists he mentored. And by helping them, he helped himself. His latest show was born from that experience. Spoiler: he’s coming back.
Edward Povey—who’s also a psychologist—discovered his real calling on the island: helping other artists break through. And he’s incredible at it. He sees you, gets you, and shifts you. He’s now reshaping his entire career around that.
So if you ask me what the biggest insight has been, it’s this: helping other artists unlock something… turns you into a better artist yourself!
The ambition seems to be the same since day one. The product is unstable by design though.
Tell us why this constant experimentation. Is it a progressive maturation or do you believe it has to be in permanent change ?
My edge is chaos.
What we do at Quarantine can’t be copied—because it’s built to be uncopyable. It runs on two things no one else can replicate: The island, which creates a one-of-a-kind emotional context, and a value proposition that’s constantly shifting, like a living organism.
I’m not a businessman. I’m an artist. And right now, my canvas is a company. Quarantine is a work of art. It has light and shadow, emotion, rhythm, composition. Every edition is a new piece. I’m not following a plan—I’m following an obsession. That’s what makes each edition an open experiment.
There is no Plan B. If it stopped being an experiment, I’d stop doing it. I’d get bored. It would lose its meaning. Because if your main goal is to make money, there are way easier ways than building something like this.
And no, I don’t think change and maturity are opposites. You can change better. Change deeper. Change with more purpose. More precision. What matures isn’t the format—it’s the ability to transform.
Maturity isn’t the end of change. It’s learning how to change with more art.
Have you heard of similar type of training for other arts like sculptors, writers, composers, choreographers, film directors? Don’t they all have the same type of need?
Every creative field deals with the same core struggle—blockage, the need for change, the search for meaning. The only difference is the medium.
And yeah, we get a lot of requests from writers, sculptors, choreographers, filmmakers… they all want in. But we can’t accept them. Not because they lack talent, but because the Art Lab is built around painting and drawing challenges. If you don’t have those skills, you stall, get frustrated, and the process loses its impact.
Creating a Quarantine that welcomes all disciplines would be beautiful—but also incredibly complex. The lab would have to be multidisciplinary, and that demands a kind of logistics I haven’t figured out yet. I worry that trying to include everything might water down what makes it powerful.
I’m not ruling it out. But I haven’t yet found a way to do it without losing the intensity.
Maybe someday I will.
Is Quarantine a brand you want to grow?
Quarantine isn’t a brand. It never was. It’s a movement. A way of doing things.
And I want to keep it small—because that’s where the power is. I don’t want to scale, or multiply events, or turn it into an experience factory. That would kill what makes it special.
Quarantine works because it’s real. It’s honest. If you turn it into a replicable product, it loses its soul. And artists can smell that. They come because they feel something different here. And because they know they’ll be surrounded by people worth knowing.
Now, not everyone can come. Sometimes it’s time, money, language, or distance. And that’s okay. Not every artist can afford this experience—or wants to commit to what it demands. That’s part of the deal.
But something’s changed.
Tell us about your next and maddest challenges.
We’ve found a way to bring some of that transformation beyond the island. And no, it won’t be a course—I can’t stand online courses. We’re not in the business of selling information. This will be something else. We’ve already tested it. It works. And it’s on par with what we do on the island.
So the next big challenge is this: designing a non-physical format that still triggers real change. Something that reaches more artists—without selling out who we are. Something accessible, but just as intense.
And yes—it’s happening. We’re already working on it.
