Born in Canada and raised between Norway, France, and Costa Rica, Paal-Erik grew up moving between languages and places. His father is French-speaking and his mother worked in radio, and his early years were shaped by sound and broadcast, starting at the NRK kindergarten in Norway and continuing at the RASUR and EIVAS preschools in Costa Rica, where school alternated daily between Spanish and English. As a child and teenager, he focused on physical activities and group environments: football as a goalkeeper, ice hockey in defense, street basketball hooper, alpine skiing competitions, snowboarding freestyle jams, and making early promotional videos for ski resorts with friends. Music developed alongside this, moving from rap and hip-hop to rock and metal, and later toward electronic music. Live shows were formative. Concerts that marked him include The Libertines and The Voidz in Paris, Larry Kidd in Québec, Slapshot in Romania, and Rock en Seine 2016, where Bring Me The Horizon and Sexy Sushi with Salut C’est Cool stood out. Visually, he is drawn to Anselm Kiefer, Kurt Schwitters, Bauhaus, Hundertwasser, and brutalist architecture.
He left upper secondary school in Oslo at Persbråten, where his social circle centered on sports, and went into retail fashion. He later completed short internships at Moncler in New York City and Tiger of Sweden in Montréal, briefly considering a long-term career in fashion. While living with his aunt in the Arctic Circle, he attempted to re-enter formal art education at the Kunstfakultet of the Arctic Circle, passing his written work before being dismissed from the drama program. Back home, he was incarcerated for a period, during which he read Shakespeare, prepared an audition for Hamlet at the National Theatre School, and became a basketball hooper with fellow inmates, forging camaraderie and competitive energy behind bars. The process was interrupted by court-mandated forensic evaluations and subsequent compulsory treatment.
After this period, he moved frequently, living in Sweden, France (Brittany), Greece, Malta, Latvia, and Romania. He briefly trained as a Subway sandwich artist before leaving after the first hour to go skateboarding. A later return to Costa Rica reconnected him with his childhood environment and introduced surfing. His work as an artist and musician is shaped by movement, interruption, and institutional experience, operating between structure and collapse without attempting resolution.
