Catherine Opie

‘I moved from Virginia to San Francisco in 1982, where I came out as a lesbian. I can’t imagine a better time and place to have done so. It was incredible, too, because that was pre-AIDS, and then I watched AIDS happen and became part of ACT-UP and Queer Nation. During our time at CalArts, Richard Hawkins gave me a book on Hans Holbein, and when I began my series ‘Portraits’, I decided that it was important for me to look at people in the queer community not as segmented bodies but as whole individuals‘.
Catherine Opie

American photographer born in Sandusky, Ohio, 1961
Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Education: BFA San Francisco Art Institute, 1985
MFA CalArts, 1988

Her Portraits, a series of photographs taken between 1993 and 1997, depict members of queer communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Since then, she has worked with a wide range of subjects: from L.A. freeways to surfers in Malibu and ice fishers in Minneapolis. She was Professor of Fine Art at Yale University from 2000 to 2001.  She has been teaching Fine Art at the University of California in Los Angeles since 2001. The Guggenheim Museum in New York staged a survey of her work in 2008.

The following interview took place just before her exhibition Girlfriends, held at Gladstone Gallery, New York, March 19 – April 24, 2010

Vice: Can you tell me about this group of photos?
Catherine Opie: They’re all from my archive. I’m working on this new body of work for an exhibition called Girlfriends, where I’m photographing kind of iconic butch lesbians, and I’m also pulling out all these black-and-white square-format photographs I did throughout the 80s and 90s, as these little moments of sexy desire and memory. It’s kind of like an ode to my former life, before domesticity and motherhood. [laughs] I’m not really hanging out in the dungeons anymore or shooting the SM community in the way I used to.

Does looking at these make you nostalgic for those times?
Yeah, it’s really fun to go through the archive. I don’t think I would have dared touch the archive like I’m doing now if it wasn’t for this exhibition that I’m planning. And also coming off of having 20 years of work being up at the Guggenheim, it gives me a different kind of permission to re-enter my work and look at things that are just part of what a voracious documenter I was. Often I decided not to show certain photos for different reasons, like following too closely on the heels of Mapplethorpe or wanting to get tenure as a teacher. [laughs] Kind of conservative reasons. Yet I’ll put Pervert out there, which doesn’t make any sense. That’s the dichotomy of me.

But how would these photos affect getting tenure?
Well, early on that was my fear, and then I realized that my fear wasn’t real. I thought, “Oh, great, they’re never going to give tenure to somebody as out and as radical as me.”

It probably turned out to be the opposite, right?
Yeah, but I didn’t know at the time. I thought, “Oh God, I’m going to shoot myself in the foot here.”

So you had all these cool photos that were sitting there, waiting.
Yeah, I have a ton of them!

They kind of remind me of the deck of cards you once made, with portraits of lesbians on each card.
Oh, Dyke Deck! That was around the same time, it’s true.

I loved that. I remember going through the deck and studying each card so closely. They were all such different, strange types of women.
I know, it was really fun to do that. I did an open call in San Francisco. A good portion of them were friends, but some were people I had never even met. They just came and performed for me, and it was so fun.

So these portraits are of friends of yours?
Yeah, they’re friends or lovers.

Who’s that one person with the crown of thorns?
That’s Pig Pen.

She’s got needles in her noodle.
Yeah, it was for a Ron Athey performance we did in Mexico City. That’s just a backstage photograph I snapped of Piggy.

You’re not involved in the SM scene at all anymore?
I still have a lot of friends involved in it, but between being a full-time professor and an artist and a mom and a partner, it’s not like I get to have that much time to go and explore and play. My partner’s definitely open to knowing that it’s a part of me, and I have carte blanche to go to San Francisco or play here in Los Angeles, but to tell you the truth, I just don’t have any time to be in that space. And also, all of a sudden when you’re taking care of a child, your brain doesn’t easily switch to “Oh, now I’m going to hurt somebody.”

I can see how those two states don’t quite fit in together.
For some people it does. I have other friends who are players, who are parents, and they don’t have a problem with it, but it was never completely a part of my everyday life in LA. It was mainly a San Francisco-based community that I would go visit.

You don’t hear that much about the SM scene anymore. It seems like it was popular in the 90s and then it disappeared again.
Well, it’s not fashionable anymore. There was a little moment when it became very much a part of popular culture. I remember when my friends in LA opened Club Fuck. We were finally making this really cool, alternative gay club for ourselves, where we could do performative pieces in relationship to SM, and all of a sudden all the hipster coolio heterosexuals were coming to it. Then it became this whole other crowd that was just coming to watch the “freaks,” which was what we were trying to get away from.

Do you think you had a hand in the popularization of SM? I think I recall you saying that you wanted to show the SM community in, was it, a “normal” sort of way?
With more humanity. I wanted them to be very humanistic. That’s probably why I haven’t printed the black-and-white work as much as the color portrait work or even the self-portraits. These are a little grittier, I suppose. They’re also very classical and beautiful, but some of them have an edge to them that I didn’t allow to come out before, because I was conscious of what those ideas of representation begin to do.

I don’t look at a lot of porn, but my boss sure does, and he says that SM has become an accepted norm for most straight porn. That’s your doing.
I think it wasn’t just me, it was a bunch of other people as well. What happens is things become mainstream when they become imaged over and over again. Something happens in relationship to ideas of representation that makes it more palatable or digestible. I guess to a certain extent it isn’t as taboo anymore.

And then it’s like, great, what do I do now that my taboo is all boring?
I’ve been thinking about that, and I think it’s just absolute extreme body modification. People are splitting their tongues and doing even more extreme things to their bodies. I think it’s so interesting, that idea of, like, what is transgressive? How can you truly be transgressive at this point within our culture?

Well, I think you going from the SM scene to being a mom, and all your new photos are these blissful domestic scenes—that’s shocking in a way, because people want to keep those kind of separate.
They do want to keep it separate. So basically, becoming homogenized and part of mainstream domesticity is transgressive for somebody like me. Ha. That’s a very funny idea.

It is, right?
I mean, I’m not living in suburbia yet, but there could be a moment. I got rid of the minivan. I did have a minivan for a long time.

From the photos, it seems suburban.
Well, it’s South Central, but we do have a house and a yard and a swing set in the back of our yard.

Cozy.
Three dogs, a cat, a turtle, and five chickens.

Oh, cute.
I know. It’s all good. I’m not complaining, that’s for sure.

When did you know you wanted to be a photographer?
At nine years old. My first self-portrait was in a summer show at Barbara Gladstone last year—it’s me at nine years old wearing these little flowered pants with the zipper half down and making muscles in front of my house. It’s really cute. I got my camera on my ninth birthday. I asked my parents for a camera because I did a book report on Lewis Hine and then just announced that I was going to be a social-documentary photographer.

What kind of teenager were you? Were you a wild kid?
I was a quiet, rebellious teenager, without them knowing about the rebellion part. I had an older brother who was pretty rebellious and caused a lot of rifts, and I realized that he could take all the attention and I could be doing exactly what he was doing but never bring attention to myself by doing it. [laughs] My parents weren’t very parental either. They weren’t the kind of parents who gave me a curfew or knew what was going on or where we were. At 13, every meal became fix-your-own, and we lived in a totally upper-middle-class suburban environment where they let us run wild, to a certain extent.

Wow, lucky.
I know. I would be out with my friends till 3 AM, and what we’d be doing was just sitting in the car, like, talking. It was pretty safe. Our big idea of fun in the 70s was to get stoned and drive from Poway, which is North County San Diego, up to Los Angeles to look through the trash of stars. I mean, we weren’t very creative in terms of being bad whatsoever.

That sounds pretty fun.
I had a great group of high school friends who took care of each other and watched each other’s back. It was a nice group of people who mainly were interested in theatre and choir.

Were you guys all gay but not out yet?
I turned out to be the only one who ended up being a lesbian, which was interesting. All my friends turned out to be heterosexual. They’re all married with kids now.

Well, so are you, right?
[laughs] Right, but I mean, I remember my good friend Steve ended up being a big money guy after college, and I went and visited him one day and my head was shaved and I was completely pierced and wearing a leather jacket. All his colleagues were like, “That’s your best friend from high school?!” They were all straighter than I ended up being.

But you kept in touch with them?
Yeah, we like each other. They all came to my Guggenheim show, which was really sweet. And friends from my grade school in Ohio came too. I’m definitely one of these people who stays in touch.

Did your own high school experience influence the series of photos you did of high school football players?
It’s an interesting question. Not so much. I did photograph the football team from my old high school, but I think that the catalyst was that I have all these nephews in Louisiana who play football. I went home to my parents’ house for two weeks in this small town, Church Point, Louisiana. It was August, and I was like, “What am I going to do for two weeks in Louisiana?” I asked my nephew if I could go photograph his high school football team and it turned into a larger body of work. Now I’ve traveled to six states and I have three more states to go. For me, the portraits contain this amazing place before they’ve become fully endowed men in society. And a lot of these football players are going off to war. It’s intense to see these young men stand before me, and I get to bear witness to them. And it’s incredible to look at the range of their faces. Some of them are obviously only playing football because their dads are making them, versus the extreme real football player, who completely embodies everything about the sport’s masculinity.

You can tell that about them?
Yeah, you can tell from the pictures who’s hyper into it versus a boy who’s just like, “Yeah, here I am.”

Do you talk to them?
Yeah, but it’s very quick. I don’t have that much time and it’s odd because the portraits don’t reveal this, but when I’m making it, the whole team is lined up after practice and just waiting for their picture to be taken. So they’re all catcalling each other during the process of it. Like, “Hey, you look like a faggot!” and I’m like, “Oh, great. Do I address this or do I just leave it alone?”

What do you do?
I don’t address it. I just go, “Hey, come on, guys, that’s not cool,” or something like that. I don’t say, “By the way, I’m a lesbian and uh…”

I assume they’re not familiar with your work.
No, they don’t know who I am.

Have they shown up to any exhibits?
So far, no. I was a little nervous about that because my Wikipedia page had my self-portrait, Pervert, on there. So I did a little editing, and put a high school football player there instead. And now I have a warning on my Wikipedia page that I’ve changed the content and I’m a bad human being. I had a Wiki war with somebody who kept wanting to change it back to the way it was. Because that’s the thing, it’s the work that everybody goes to right away, but it’s really a very small representation of the work I’ve made.

Yeah, I guess it must get a little annoying to be pigeonholed like that.
It’s always the precursor of how I’m described. I’m like, well, actually, if you look at it, it’s really just a small portion of what I think about, and I’m not a singular identity, nor do I want to be.

You’re like, “What about the icehouses?”
Like, hello!

When you had your Guggenheim show, there were a ton of ads in the subway for it. They had the sweet portrait of your son in a tutu and the title American Photographer. I kept thinking, man, I bet some Midwestern tourists are going to look at this and think, “Oh, what a cute show about children and America,” and then they’d go to the museum and totally freak out. Did you hear of anybody having any extreme reactions?
Well, it was a really popular show. They told me that probably 5,000 people went through it per day from September to January. There were lines around the block toward the end of the exhibition. I think the museum was kind of thrilled. They don’t usually give all four floors over to photography. So I anticipated, as I often do, a certain amount of letter writing and censorship possibility in relationship to some of the work. And there was none. There was not one negative letter to the museum. No “I can’t believe an American institution like the Guggenheim would show this kind of work,” nothing. And it’s always been interesting to me that I’ve been able to skip the whole censorship thing to a certain extent. I think it’s because the photographs end up being really quiet, that you get to contemplate with them. They’re in your face, but not, like, shoving it down your throat.

Right, I often see the word “regal” used to describe those portraits.
Beauty, I use beauty. Beauty is an easy thing to use. It’s a good thing that it’s there.

Interview conducted by Amy Kellner, Managing Editor at Vice magazine.

Catherine Opie is represented by Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Gladstone Gallery, New York.
http://www.regenprojects.com/
http://www.gladstonegallery.com/

Serge Spitzer

installation view, image by André Morin

How did you start making art?
I don’t know if I started making art or I got caught into it. It was never a clear decision from my side, it has more to do with the fact that I was curious about many things and sometimes these things took a shape which became associated with ideas of art.

Could you tell us about the Reality Models?
What I can say is that I am interested to find certain models which exist between people, between places, between ideas. I try to mediate between them and I try to find significance in a very simple thing which is universal and by definition this becomes a model for a reality we all experience in different places, different cultures. We are preoccupied or at least we have common denominators, coordinates and those become in a way a kind of trajectory of references. These references are what I call ‘reality models’.

Could you tell us about the project for the Palais de Tokyo?
I do not think I am exhibiting a project, the project is exhibiting itself. It is a system I made 15 years ago in Lyon for the first time. I am happy to have the opportunity to show this piece in France again, to rebuild work which has been destroyed 15 years ago and to make it clearer despite the ambiguity I feel about a work which defines itself by its nakedness. In a way it is a naked system of contradictions. Making it again enables me to show how adaptable it is in different conditions.

Did you conduct research on the building?
No, but I was just fascinated by this hidden space which was always there. I’ve seen the Palais de Tokyo for the first time in December. I know very little about its history but I know that this building which is hidden for so many years, used to be a Museum of modern art. And I know that to have such a significant institution buried, hidden and out of view for so many years, it’s something significant. In a way I wanted to use its volume of air which stays there maybe, possibly unused, unfunctional but significant and to make it circulate through Palais de Tokyo above the surface in a kind of shape defined in its lack of function.

In a way your installation could also been considered as a kind of link between the past of the building and its future
Of course, but you should know that even if the space would not been used in the future, it would have been an exciting and interesting possibility. I am fascinated by how certain systems become clear in different contexts. Now if you take a system and you put it in a different context, it gains something from the surrounding mystery, history and aura and enlarges the significance of it because you are creating something which in a way evolves and remains the same. And I think that the potential of this work is that it is always the same but is always different.

What about scale?
Well I think that it is very clear the installation can not be too small because the size of the tubes and the relationship between the scale of the elements with the human body is very important to me. The fact that you have certain intentions, wishes and associations in this perspective and not like in a small straw model construction, it is very important. We need to understand the relativity between the human scale and certain interventions. In this case the systems are always much larger and much complex that we are able to see. They can not be insignificant in size.

What about the title?
It is important to understand that the title of this work which refers to a baguette and a croissant is a way to reference to a place but also comes back to the origins of the piece as an ambiguous description of sculpture. A baguette and a croissant are two elements which are associated with nurturing, with food and associated with our intimacy and of course to France. But in a way they also represent models of sculpture: a croissant and a baguette, they are made from flower, water and butter. The cooking transforms them into sculptural objects. The bread is chewy, it is like a form, with different kinds of air and displaced bubbles of air inside. The croissant is a volume which is made of layers. The butter which becomes emptiness in a way, but full by its own construction. So this analysis of everyday life elements like a fruit or a vegetable or a croissant, comes from my interest to generate for people some curiosity. Sometimes the title has to be boring, or long like this one. Also the work is very large and needs to have a trail in order for you to understand that the work takes a shape but fights again it. And at the same time, hope for people to look for meaning in everyday life and in a way transform it back into a model.

Is it a sculpture? An installation?
It is not an objet d’art for sure. It does not fit in the category of a certain way of intervention because I do not believe in these categories.

But it is shown in some art venue.
Yes but it is a different specie, it is a different category. It is also an installation and also a sculpture and a site-specific installation of course using the air from below. But it is also an universal idea. You know the breath of place takes over this work and the breath of this place will fill it up with meaning. The idea is ‘Is this meaning transportable only in one shape?‘ Or ‘Is this meaning transportable in a multitude of shapes using the same ideologies or attitudes?‘ I see my role is pointing towards something which is undefined but is generous, something which can give many meanings, adapt to many places and be significant universally because it starts from something very specific and local. And if there is something which interests me, is to find those elements which can speak an universal language of meaning and that are still very much adapted to a place. It is somehow like human beings.

installation view, image by André Morin

Vos débuts en art
Je ne sais pas si j’ai commencé à faire de l’art ou si j’ai été happé par l’art. Cela n’a jamais été une décision claire de ma part, c’est davantage dû au fait que j’étais curieux d’un certain nombre de choses qui ont pris forme et ont été associées à des idées en rapport avec l’art.

Pouvez-vous évoquer les Modèles de Réalité ?
Ce que je peux dire, c’est que cela m’intéresse de trouver certains modèles qui existent entre les gens, entre les endroits, entre les idées. J’essaie d’établir un lien entre eux et j’essaie de trouver un sens à une chose très simple qui est universelle et qui par définition devient un modèle de la réalité dont nous faisons tous l’expérience, dans différents contextes et différentes cultures. Nous sommes préoccupés ou tout du moins nous avons des dénominateurs et des coordonnées communs qui deviennent d’une certaine manière des trajectoires de références. Ces références sont ce que je nomme les « modèles de réalité ».

Pouvez-vous nous parler du projet pour le Palais de Tokyo ?
Je ne pense pas que j’expose un projet en tant que tel, c’est davantage le projet qui s’expose. Il s’agit d’un système que j’ai créé il y a quinze ans à Lyon. Je me réjouis à l’idée de montrer ce travail à nouveau en France, de le reconstruire alors qu’il a été démonté quinze ans auparavant. Il s’agit aussi d’apporter des précisions, ce malgré l’ambiguïté que j’éprouve pour cette pièce qui se définit par sa nudité. D’une certaine manière, c’est un système nu, plein de contradictions. Le fait de le refaire me permet de montrer à quel point il s’adapte à différentes conditions.

Avez-vous effectué des recherches sur le bâtiment ?
Non, j’étais seulement fasciné par cet espace caché des regards qui a toujours été là. J’ai vu le Palais de Tokyo pour la première fois en décembre. Je ne connais pas bien son histoire, je sais juste que ce bâtiment abritait le Musée d’art moderne auparavant. Et je sais que le fait d’avoir une institution aussi importante ensevelie, cachée et hors de vue depuis tant d’années est une chose inestimable. D’une certaine manière, je voulais utiliser le volume d’air qui subsiste peut-être dans cet espace, probablement inutilisé, non fonctionnel mais néanmoins important. Je voulais le faire circuler à travers le Palais de Tokyo au-dessus de la surface, et qu’il prenne une forme définie par cette absence de fonction.

Votre installation pourrait aussi être considérée comme une sorte de trait d’union entre le passé et le futur de ce bâtiment
Bien entendu. Ceci dit, s’il n’était pas prévu de réhabiliter cet espace prochainement, cela aurait été tout de même une possibilité aussi stimulante qu’intéressante. Je suis fasciné par la façon dont certains systèmes se révèlent à nous dans des contextes différents. Maintenant, si vous prenez un système et que vous le placez dans un contexte différent, il tire parti du mystère, de l’histoire et de l’aura environnants. Sa portée s’en trouve ainsi agrandie car vous créez quelque chose qui évolue tout en restant identique. Et je pense que le potentiel de cette pièce réside dans le fait qu’elle est toujours la même et également différente à chaque fois.

Un mot sur l’échelle ?
Et bien il me semble évident que l’installation ne peut pas être de taille réduite, au vu de la dimension des tubes. La relation entre l’échelle des éléments et le corps humain est également importante pour moi. De mon point de vue, il y a certaines intentions, certains souhaits et associations qui sous-tendent ce projet : il ne s’agit pas de modèles réduits. Nous devons comprendre la relativité entre l’échelle humaine et certaines interventions. Dans ce cas, les systèmes sont toujours plus grands et plus complexes qu’il n’y parait. Leur taille est significative.

Un mot sur le titre ?
Le titre de ce projet, qui évoque une baguette et un croissant fait référence, en quelque sorte, à un endroit précis, mais rappelle également les origines de la pièce par cette description ambiguë d’une sculpture. La baguette et le croissant sont deux éléments associés à la nourriture, et par extension à notre quotidien et enfin à la France. Mais d’une certaine manière, ils représentent également des modèles de sculpture : un croissant et une baguette s’obtiennent en utilisant des céréales, de l’eau et du beurre. La cuisson les transforme en objets sculpturaux. Le pain est d’une consistance molle, et s’apparente à une forme, avec des bulles d’air disséminées à l’intérieur. Le croissant est un volume constitué de différentes couches superposées. Par certains aspects, le beurre cesse d’être un solide pendant la cuisson, mais il reste plein, du fait de sa structure. Donc cette analyse d’éléments du quotidien tels qu’un fruit, un légume ou un croissant vient de mon intérêt pour susciter la curiosité des gens. Parfois, le titre doit être ennuyeux ou long, comme c’est le cas ici. De même que la pièce a des dimensions importantes, elle doit avoir un parcours pour que vous compreniez qu’elle a une forme donnée contre laquelle elle se bat. De la même manière, elle incarne la possibilité pour le spectateur de s’interroger sur le sens de la vie quotidienne et la possibilité de le transformer en un modèle de réalité.

S’agit-il d’une sculpture ? D’une installation ?
En tout cas, il ne s’agit pas d’un objet d’art. Cela ne rentre pas dans une catégorie car je ne crois pas à tout ce système de classification.

Pourtant la pièce est montrée dans un centre d’art
Effectivement, mais il s’agit d’une espèce différente, qui appartient à une autre catégorie. C’est à la fois une sculpture et une installation in situ qui utilise l’air provenant du niveau inférieur. Mais c’est également une idée universelle. Vous savez, c’est le souffle provenant de cet endroit qui emplit cette structure, et qui lui donne son sens. On se demande alors si le sens est une donnée transportable dans une forme spécifique ou dans une multitude de formes utilisant les mêmes idéologies. Je pense que mon rôle est de désigner cette chose indéfinie mais généreuse, pouvant avoir plusieurs significations, pouvant s’adapter à différents endroits et endosser ce caractère universel car elle a pour point de départ un endroit précis. Pour moi, c’est intéressant de rassembler ces éléments qui s’adressent à tout le monde d’une part, et qui s’adaptent néanmoins à un endroit précis d’autre part. C’est en quelque sorte comme avec les êtres humains.

Re/Search: Bread and Butter with the ever present Question of How to define the difference between a Baguette and a Croissant (II), 1995-2010
Palais de Tokyo, Paris (19 Feb – 05 Dec 2010)

http://www.realitymodels.org/

Tim Mara

‘In the hierarchy of fine art, printmaking is usually associated with craft skills – with technique. And that gets in the way. My work was always about the ideas more than the medium‘.
Tim Mara

Alan’s Room, 1974. Courtesy of Alice & Emily Mara

Tim Mara (1948-1997) was a respected Professor of Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London and was awarded with numerous prizes. His screenprints, which often took up to three months to complete, offer multiple colours over black and white collages.

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, usually on paper. It normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of an image. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Printmaking is not chosen only for its ability to produce multiple copies, but rather for the unique qualities that each of the printmaking processes lends itself to.
Prints are created from a single original surface, known technically as a matrix. Common types of matrices include: plates of metal, usually copper or zinc for engraving or etching; stone, used for lithography; blocks of wood for woodcuts, linoleum for linocuts and fabric plates for screen-printing.

Tim Mara’s engagement as Professor coincided with important changes and developments in print technology, especially in computerised and digital processes. Tim Mara embraced these exciting advancements and instigated the fine art computer cluster into the department complete with inkjet printers, computers and scanning plus processing technologies.
He was wise enough to view these new technologies as an addition to the family of print mediums not a replacement for its existing processes. He continued to promote and encourage usage of the traditional means of expression alongside and often integrated with these new developments. Needless to say his perfectionism led him to process the prints himself.

Four Heads, 1980. Courtesy of Alice & Emily Mara

His work was often considered as ‘revisiting Pop Art’, indeed everyday life subjects were displayed in bright colours. However Tim stated he was particularly interested in showing still life: ‘I know that the pop thing was going on – screen printing was there, photography was there, the everyday objects were there – but I was much more interested pictorially in Velásquez and Vermeer. Those prints had much more to do with painting. Just because I was using imagery that was contemporary and easily read, because I was trying to speak to the person who was looking at the picture, didn’t mean that my prints were related to Richard Hamilton’s collages‘.

The early prints depict mostly interiors with elaborated composition and some narrative content. They are full of details and made of collaged black and white photographs and as many as fifty or sixty separately printed colours. Both great ability and patience were required. After he graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1973, his patterns became more simple with isolated objects, rather than arranged compositions featuring people and objects. He then achieved technical mastery and was able to reproduce the aspect of any material, from glass to steel. He was really interested in optical perception, rather than in demonstrating manual ability. He wanted to tell stories.

Picture Window, 1980. Courtesy of Alice & Emily Mara

‘I saw myself as a film maker who also made prints. I didn’t want to draw or make a piece of work which relied on manual skill. When you make a film, you prepare the shots, shoot them and edit them but you never touch them – even though you are very involved emotionally and intellectually. I wanted to make pictures in the same way.’
He was the author of many articles and essays on printmaking, and in 1978 he was commissioned to write The Thames and Hudson Manual of Screen Printing.

After his postgraduate degree, Mara joined Bagnigge Wells Stuidio in Kings Cross, and then set up Errol Street Studio with other printmaking graduates Chris Plowman, Tricia Stainton, Phil Griffin and David Jacobson. In 1989 he set up a larger more comprehensive workshop at Wildman Corner Studio in Walthamstow with two friends and ex-students Eric Great-Rex and Martin Barrett.

At the end of the 1980s, he started to juxtapose two pictures of everyday objects. Composition was less dense and narrative content was over. At the time, Tim Mara was trying to achieve a visual connection in his prints. He later continued by experiencing contrasting materials, for example cardboard and wired glass.

Reeded Glass and Shadow, 1997. Courtesy of Alice & Emily Mara

Born in Dublin, his family moved to England in 1953. He attended St. Joseph’s College, London, Wolverhampton Art College and the Royal College of Art, London, from he graduated with a Masters Degree.
He taught as part-time lecturer in printmaking at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and Brighton Polytechnic before taking up the full-time post of principal lecturer in printmaking at Chelsea School of Art (1980-90). He was appointed Professor of printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 1990 and was head of the School of Fine Art between 1993 and 1995.
During his career, he participated in more than forty group exhibitions and had ten solo shows. He was also awarded with numerous prizes, including the Major Travelling Scholarship by the Royal College of Art (1976), the British International Print Biennale (1982 and 1984) among many others.
His work is represented in several public and private collections worldwide. Some of his work is part of the Victoria & Albert Museum collection.

CONVERSATION WITH ALICE MARA

While in London, I met Alice Mara, one of Tim Mara’s daughters. The meeting point was Walthamstow, North East London, where the Maras are established for several decades. We spent several hours talking, and I felt myself in a privileged position, being able to have a look at all the stored prints.

What do you remember of your father?
I remember I always used to go to his studio, I loved it, and he showed me how to make a positive and other things so I always worked alongside him from a very young age – 8 or something.
Then he decided to give up the studio and work from home. We had a shed in the garden so he built a studio in there. It was quite a big shed actually. He was always cleaning the pictures and silkscreens. He used to take photos of me, my sister and my mum in different outfits for his prints. He used family and friends basically.
I just remember he was always kind of sketching away, always thinking of new ideas. A couple of times, I went out with him to take photos in the street, it could be objects or anything else.
Also as he worked at the Royal College, we would go and visit him there. He was interested in everything that was around him you know: architecture, history, art, news. Near his most recent studio there was a shop called Wakefields. They sold metal buckets and objects that were depicted in the imagery. So my dad enjoyed going there a lot.

Power Cuts Imminent, 1975. Courtesy of Alice & Emily Mara

You told me he was sketching a lot. Did he also use photography?
He was not using photographs to prepare work, he would rather draw in a sketchbook. Some artists paint or do spectacular stuff in their sketchbook, he did not do that. It was more quite more technical in his case I think. He used photography as a separated element. For Power Cuts Imminent he would take pictures of my mum and the television set on the sofa so he sort of directed what he liked. In the late years, for the prints with the single objects, he took a few pictures of the objects he bought.

Tim Mara’s sketch. Picture by the author. Courtesy of Alice & Emily Mara

Tim Mara was also a reputed teacher.
Well, I never witnessed him teaching, that is a kind of aspect I never saw. I know he was friends with his students, and I always see people saying ‘I knew your Dad‘. So I rather know about their perspectives than his. I remember he was talking about his students quite often, he was also kind of proud of them as well, especially when he was teaching at The Royal College. They were really good students, pretty motivated. I remember actually, he worked in a place called Wigan, in the North. He was working with little kids. He did a residency there and he really enjoyed it. The kids were asking really funny questions about printmaking. It was the same with his students. I remember one day, I came home and there was about eight Valentine cards. I asked him if it was somehow related with some project with his students. He replied that he just got these on the morning. I think the students were quite devoted to him.

Mara + Mara

The Eagle Gallery, in association with Sarah Brundle at One Offs, is proud to present Mara + Mara, an exhibition of rare prints from the Tim Mara archive and ceramics by Alice Mara, which have been made in response to her father’s work.
Emma Hill Fine Art Eagle Gallery
159 Farrington Road London
13 May – 11 June 2010
http://www.emmahilleagle.com/

Tuca Vieira

Paraisopólis. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

‘I have published this picture many times. I like it because it symbolises the worst about this country, social unequality.’
Tuca Vieira

His work is linked with cityscape, architecture and urbanism, more specifically in São Paulo, his hometown.
São Paulo is known for its helicopter fleet, a sea of traffic, architecture and a multitude of skyscrapers. It officially became a city in 1711 but had lacked any city plan before 1889, and no zoning law was passed until 1972. It is now the largest city in Brazil and the third in the world in number of buildings (more than 5000), losing only to Hong Kong and New York City.

Some describe Tuca Vieira as a urban landscape photographer. His São Paulo series, widely published, shows the gigantic city from different angles, quite often standing back from the urban bustle.
Maybe the urban landscape is the real subject of his work. We notice the photographs depict only a few characters, more often they are in the distance or pictured by a shadow. It seems they are swallowed up by the city’s thickness.

Architecture plays also a major role, with repetitive patterns such as floors or windows. In a way, they contribute to give the impression that the picture sometimes becomes some abstract geometrical canvas. Two pictures I have seen on his website are good examples of this. They were taken from above, one is showing people at a zebra crossing (Paulista Avenue) and the other one is an outdoor market with blue tarpaulins making some kind of mosaic (Concórdia Square).

Tuca’s photographic work embraces both colour and black & white. The shooting viewpoint is quite often in the distance and tends to picture the city as a sprawling entity, possibly scary. Center (see below) is a panoramic view of São Paulo from some building floor which illustrates perfectly this impression, it is as we would look at the metropolis through some skylight.

As a final word to this short introduction, I would like to add that Tuca Vieira is also a sky photographer. I just looked at the images published in this review, as well as the ones displayed in his website (http://www.fototucavieira.com.br/).
I was struck by the fact that the sky is definitely a key element in Tuca’s photography. Either he is pointing the lens of his camera at the sky (see below Washington). Or he is standing in high level when he is taking the shot. It contributes to give some dizzy or breathtaking feeling when we are facing the images, like with most of Andreas Gursky’s work. However the huge difference between them is that Tuca is not so distant with the subject of his photography.

Tell me about yourself.
I am from typical Brazilian, urban, middle-class family, descendant of European immigrants. There are many books trying to define the Brazilian identity, I fell myself somewhere between Bolivia and Italy, let’s say so..

What are you looking for when you process an image?
I am always trying to understand where I am, what things mean and the camera is a wonderful tool for this. Photography has something to do with possession. When I have a good picture of a place, it is like to have the place for myself, or even better, to understand the place. If I can communicate this feeling to another person, then I think I have a good picture.

Do you have criteria for choosing the composition?
After choosing an interesting subject, I try to find the best way to translate the feeling I have in front of this subject. It is a rational and slow process and it is a consequence that some of my pictures have a rigid composition. I try to find a balance, with a good framing everything is important and nothing is missing, every corner has its significance.

What is a typical day of work?
After some years in photojournalism, working on the streets every day, now I find myself most of the time working in office, editing, sending pictures, making computer work, dealing with bureaucracy, etc… I spend less than 30% of my time shooting. It looks boring, but I do think that the less I shoot, the better I shoot, especially in this moment of photography when images are everywhere.

What are your projects?
Now I am editing the pictures I‘ve made in Berlin last year during a three month artistic residency. I wish I could make a book! It was a deep, very intense experience that really changed the course of my photography.

Berlin, 2009. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

How did you choose to work while in Berlin? Was your interest in the buildings somehow linked with the history of the city? (the Nazi era, the Wall era, the recent rebuidings etc.)
A city like Berlin has a kind of ‘collective memory’. The city means something for everybody, even if you have never been there. In Berlin it is hard to avoid the history behind every building, it is like a historical laboratory of the 20th century. I decided to shoot at night to create this ‘memory city’ but also to explore the new possibilities of color in digital photography. Before digital, we had to use daylight films to shoot at night and everything had a yellow/orange color. I ask myself many questions about digital but this is a good advantage.

How important is art in your life?
It is just like food, I can’t live without art.

Could you review your work in a critical way?
It’s difficult to me. I am a very critical person but I try not to criticize too much my own work. I am afraid that too much self-critic could block the creative process. But (so far) I think I have made a contribution to the photography of São Paulo.

What is your dream?
To create some beauty.

What do you see for yourself in ten years?
I hope I can make more of what I want than what people want me to do.

What epitaph on your grave?
“Diz que fui por aí” (the title of a brazilian song, something like ‘tell them I went for a walk‘).

Office, Rio de Janeiro. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

Oscar Niemeyer is one of the persons I admire the most. Not only for his art, but also for his political views.

Viaduto Santa Ifigênia. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

This is in São Paulo Center. To me, it’s like a metaphor of this city where some beauty is possible over the chaos and ugliness.

Baikonour, Kazakhstan. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

I went to Kazakhstan to cover the story about the first Brazilian astronaut.

London, 2007. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

Nothing against clichés…

Rio de Janeiro, 2006. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

There is nothing like to walk in a city with a small camera. Images are everywhere. One of the things I like in photography is to create beauty from this kind of object.

Copan. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

Copan is a 1954 building by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. It’s a landmark in the city, where 6000 people live, with they own postal code. I live one block from Copan, in São Paulo Center. This is the back facade, hard to see from the street level.

Centro. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

From an apartment in Copan building.

São Paulo, 2008. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

Sad and common scene in São Paulo. Sometimes a composition makes the difference.

Washington, 2004. Courtesy of Tuca Vieira

André Kertész, one of my favourite photographers used to say: ’simplify, simplify’.

Tuca Vieira
Born in 1974.
Lives and works in São Paulo.
Became professional photographer in 1991.
Studied Language and Literature at the University of São Paulo.

http://www.fototucavieira.com.br/

Kevin Cummins

‘I always thought, that Manchester should have a museum of popular culture. I was going to donate all my memorabilia to it, have a Kevin Cummins room.’
from The Observer 20 September 2009

Factory club, 1979. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

Manchester’s music scene in a few dates
1976: The Sex Pistols play at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Castelfield (inner city area of Manchester)
1978: Factory Records, the independent record label starts
1979: Factory Records releases Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures
1982: The nightclub The Haçienda opens and becomes the centre of the local acid house and rave scene
1990: The Happy Mondays release Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches and Manchester is dubbed Madchester

Kevin Cummins made his debut in the mid 1970s, when he documented the emerging punk and rock scene in Manchester with bands like the Buzzcocks or Joy Division. He has photographed all the major musicians since then, including Marc Bolan, David Bowie, The Smiths, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Patti Smith, R.E.M., Mick Jagger, Manic Street Preachers, Foo Fighters…
His work can be seen on many record sleeves and book jackets. It encompasses various collaborations, with press playing a major role. He was a founding contributor to The Face, a chief photographer for New Musical Express during ten years, and he has contributed to many major UK publications, such as The Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Big Issue, Vogue, Mojo, Esquire, Sleaze Nation and Elle. He also played a major role in establishing City Life, Manchester’s what’s on guide.
In 1986 he was commissioned by Wigan Heritage Centre to photograph contemporary life in Wigan – an important period for the town due to the widespread closure of Britain’s coal mines.
He worked extensively with The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester when it opened in the late 1970s. Later on, he collaborated with The Royal Opera House, The Royal Northern Ballet, The Liverpool Playhouse and The Oxford Playhouse. He is now commissioned by The National Theatre in London on a regular basis.

Being a good photographer is not just about taking good pictures. You also have to be inventive and take advantage of what could be a critical situation. What would you do if the band you are supposed to shoot outdoors does not show up until 6PM when the light is vanishing? In Spain for a NME session with the Happy Mondays, he actually did the shooting on the roof of the hotel, immortalising Shawn Ryder standing with the E letter (see below). This photograph became an iconic image for the Madchester era.
Kevin admits he never liked the studio shooting because it is not a natural environment for the people. He prefers to put them in a place they feel comfortable, a place they belong to. When he shot the famous picture of Joy Division on a snow-covered bridge in Manchester (see at the very end of the article), he wanted to frame them in their environment. He used a 20 mm lens to get the wide perspective, so it seems that they are standing further away. For Kevin, ‘That’s an architectural shot with a band in it.’

His most recent book Manchester: Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain was released in 2009. It is a beautiful tribute to his home city of Manchester through its pop history and its bands. It also features essays written by the NME writers Paul Morley, Stuart Maconie, Gavin Martin and John Harris. The book has four main sections, corresponding to main musical moments: punk, indie, Madchester and Britpop.

Hotel Subur Maritim, Stiges, Spain, 11 March 1990. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

Kevin Cummins is a busy man. I had the chance to meet him in London. We discussed photography, his work and of course, Manchester.

Tell me about yourself
I went to a grammar school, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I think that in England, if like me you go to an all boys Catholic grammar school, it’s a hot-house really to go to university, with very little thought about what you are going to do beyond that, purely to get you to carry on with an education. And I’d always been interested in photography, because my father and my mother’s father – my maternal grandfather -  were both keen amateur photographers. So probably from the age of five I was processing; we had a dark room at home and I came to London on some holidays, and took some photographs, and I processed and printed them. I was about five years old and I suppose at that age, you are more interested in the image that comes up on the paper, and that was the excitement, rather than composition, it’s purely this act of magic almost. And then I was due to go to Warwick University to read English, and I met someone that Summer who suggested I should go to do a photography or art degree because that has always been my interest, so at the last minute I changed course and went to study photography, and that was it.

What are you looking for when you process an image?
I think it is different every time. When you work like I do, photographing people mainly, the most important thing for a portrait is to capture something of your sitter in the shot. And I think a lot of photographers tend to want to impose their values on that picture rather than the values of the subject. And so they develop a technique or something which is almost like a signature, that will identify that picture as that photographer’s picture. The subject matter can be anything, the subject is a vanity.  But the way I prefer to work is to spend time with people if I can, so I get to know them. Or over the years you develop a working relationship with people so it is quite comfortable when you work, you are moving on a step further because there’s mutual trust there. I’ve worked with quite a lot of people now for thirty years or more, and I am still photographing people I was photographing in the mid-1970s. That is a testimony to the work I do.
But I think the most important thing when you see a photograph of somebody is it’s got to give you something back, it’s got to tell you about that person. You almost shouldn’t need a caption with a picture to tell you more than you thought it was telling you, you should be able to revisit it, and it tells that story.

Nigel, Neil, Simon, Paul and Dave at Prenton Park (Tranmere Rovers FC), 1985.
Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

The picture must tell more about the subject than the photographer.
Yeah there’s too many photographers who like to impose a grand style on it.

Do you have a criteria for choosing the composition?
I like to use architecture, I like to use the architecture of a city in pictures. When you photograph somebody and you are photographing them in their hometown or you’re photographing them in and around their work place, it is interesting to include that in the shot, because again that draws you into the picture.
I have a tendency I think, compositionally, because I am left handed, to always leave space on the left-hand side and draw people into the picture that way, so my subjects tend to be on the right-hand side of the shot. And also I think because I photographed a lot, I probably shot two hundred covers for the NME, and so automatically when I am looking at somebody to do a picture I think space for the logo, and I leave space and bring you into the picture. And sometimes I find I can’t get out of that, I’m locked into this way of composition and I can’t sometimes shift out of it. I think it’s because I’m left-handed…I find it quite awkward using a camera, because camera’s are for right-handed people, so the whole balance of the camera is the wrong way round for me, so it is something I had to fight against initially, to work with.

Mark E. Smith, 2005. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

What is a typical day of work?
There isn’t one at all. Most people would say a typical day of work for me is spending the day talking to people generally, dealing with requests and the likeness.
When I was working on the board, I was spending a lot of time with the designer, backwards and forwards by email, nobody meets anybody any more so you just happen to sit on your own in a room and communicate via email or by phone or send a text message. A typical day for me is generally not meeting people, it is sitting on my own talking to people by other means. The kind of work I do, 90 per cent of it is dealing with all the periphery work, making sure the printer does what I need him to do the proper way, spending all my time doing my tax returns, and keeping receipts and all this stuff you weren’t trained to do.
In an ideal world you would just take photographs and let somebody else worry about that. We don’t have that luxury.
I sometimes do travel photographs for a travel guide, and that’s great because it means I can just go off for three weeks, I don’t deal with press offices and PRs or anything, it’s almost like a form of escapism, it is almost like a holiday, just photographing.

What about Manchester?
I went to Manchester city football, when the team were moving from their old ground, about five or six years ago, I went and saw them and asked if I could document it. I thought it was important for someone like me to document it. I asked the club if I could take pictures of the final season. I felt it was really important to do it, and they had the foresight to do it. They’d have moved to a new stadium, and it was a shame they wouldn’t have any pictures of the old one. So I offered to do it, and I spent a year with them and they were great to work with, really accommodating. Interestingly, obviously it’s a very closed world football, it’s not my discipline at all doing that kind of thing, but I thought it would be a challenge for me as well, and also to work exclusively with colour was important because what I wanted was to get this feeling you get as a small child going to your first football game and you see this huge expanse of green, it’s really heavily saturated with colour, and the sky’s blue and the grass is green, and the team are the same colour as the sky… and so I spent about two months experimenting towards the end of the previous season, taking pictures with every different film stock I could get, to see which film stock would give me that feeling. So interestingly I wanted it to be shot on film but I also wanted it to be shot on negative rather than color transparency, because I wanted that saturated colour, so eventually I found a Fuji film, Fuji press film that gave that red that would bleed and the green was bright, a unnatural green; it was great film, so I just bought stacks of that, and shot it on that over part of the season. After the initial period where the players were probably slightly suspicious of me being there, they got used to it and would ask me what I was doing and I’d take my own books every now and again and show them how we were progressing with it, so I included everybody. It was really important that they felt part of it, and half way through the season they were so used to me standing there…you know I wasn’t shooting action shots, I was shooting the ground and people who would go on to watch it, the players when they were training… I had to get everybody on my side really. And each week in the match magazine, we’d put a picture from the previous week, and then I’d talk about it, so then all the fans were aware of what I was doing, and quite a lot of City fans know me anyway, because of my music work, so they know who I am; and about halfway through the season people would come up to me and say, ‘there’s a really interesting looking bloke who sits over there, you should go and see him‘, so everybody was getting involved; it was a real community project in the end, it was great. I couldn’t do any music stuff at all that season, because I was so sated on this project. The only other work I did was I shot two or three footballers for interview features for a football magazine that I’d never worked for before. I couldn’t think of anything else. It was a real obsession for a year.

And the pictures of the fans, with the tattoos?
People would email me, and say ‘my sister’s got a really good tattoo‘, or ‘my friend’s got this‘. So I didn’t have to look that far, people were telling me what they thought would be good, it was a nice project. It took me ages then once I’d done it to get it out of my system really, because that had been my world for a year. It’s very different to rock n’ roll, even though you’re working with another level of celebrity. They get up at ten o’clock in the morning and musicians don’t, so it was quite a difficult one really.

Hulme, 1981. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

And the picture of Hulme Crescents…when I take pictures in Manchester I’m photographing in urban landscapes almost. I quite often shoot street scenes or bits of architecture or bits of new build, or bits of crumbling, just because I thought it was an interesting adjunct to what I was doing, and I felt it was important in a way. There’s a picture I shot on the bridge in Hulme of the road below, and people have said to me that’s their favorite Joy Division photograph, because the band aren’t in it but it’s a picture of the space they occupied, and I think that’s quite interesting.

What are your projects?
Various things actually. But I am always loath to talk about what I’ve got coming up in the future because people might jump in and try and do it instead…I have got a Joy Division book coming up which will be available worldwide, in fact they’re doing a French version. I did a very small edition two years ago, an edition of 200, just like a private press collector’s special. The idea is doing a wider more mainstream version,  and I think they want me to put almost every shot in that, so it’s a complete edit of every picture I ever took. And they’ve got Sue Webster, she’s written an essay for it, just a personal piece about what Joy Division meant to her when she was growing up.
And I met Jay McInerney at a literary event in November, and he told me Joy Division is his favorite band so I said ‘why don’t you write the introduction?‘, so he’s writing that, and Bernard Sumner is writing the epilogue. Getting Bernard to do that almost validates it in a way for people who would buy it, it gives it his stamp of authorization on it. And I’m doing a show in Ventimiglia in northern Italy, that’ll be a major picture expo in May and June and that’s quite a nice thing to do. It’s second only to Arles in Europe, for photography. Again they saw the Manchester stuff and the theme this year is photography and the city, and obviously because Manchester is defined by its music they wanted that. That’ll be really nice.

And there are two other things I’m working on at the moment but I don’t really want to say too much about them.

How important is art in your life?
It is really important. I think culture is generally, because that’s the world I’ve worked in. I always complain about photographers but I think a lot of photographers do not look beyond what they are doing. You can look at art and the way other people work and you can look at Noble and Webster and you can look at Jeremy’s work (i.e. Jeremy Deller) and you can look at different ways people work within the art world, using that as a framework without being restricted. I think that’s really important. Photography imposes so many restrictions and I think quite a lot of the time you’re being commissioned by people with no art background whatsoever. Quite often at the NME or the music papers you are commissioned by writers and their idea of a photograph is a very literal interpretation of the read. Maybe occasionally you should do that but you should bring something of yourself, something that they themselves would never have thought of, because that’s our job, that’s where the creative process comes from. I think writers quite naturally do think in quite a literal way. Going back to your question about art, it’s really important, feeling and creativity is important, it takes people out of the mundane.

Liam Gallagher, 1994. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

Could you review your work in a critical way?
I am quite critical when I choose stuff and quite often, when I revisit, I may think I could have take a better shot if I’d done various things. For example I did a shot of Michael Hutchence, and when I did the shot for the NME cover, he’d just had a hit in England with long wavy hair, and he had it cut just before my shot, so nobody would know him. I thought, and I asked him to write INXS in lipstick on his chest and it looked really great, he had this jacket. And about two months later I thought if I’d just got someone to do a kiss above the I of INXS  it would have made the shot, and obviously I could just photoshop that on it but I think that’s dishonest. Every time I look at that shot I think I should have done it. Similarly, with the Joy Division pictures I think, I took those when I was still learning how to take pictures of musicians. So all I knew was I did not want to take a confrontational clichéd rock style picture, I wanted to do something very different from that. So I was restricted slightly by the equipment I was using, and I would maybe have taken those shots in a slightly different way now. It doesn’t matter. It’s a learning thing, you learn as you work and sometimes you can get very bogged down by being over-analytical of your own work. I think you should just take what you think is a natural shot because once you start over-analyzing your work you’re imposing too many restrictions on yourself, so I don’t know, I don’t know how much it matters, it’s up to other people to interpret it, and say what they think, because everybody gets something different from it, they’re not having my experience, and likewise I’m not looking at those photos afresh for the first time.

What is your dream?
I don’t know really. I think I’m going to sound really boring and say I don’t really have one. I think I’ve been, I continue to have, a fairly interesting life-style, somebody might phone me tomorrow and offer me a project to work on that I’d find really interesting, I don’t know. I don’t sit there thinking ‘Oh I wish I could do x‘. I’m able to do that to a degree. About five years ago I was asked to do a collaboration with Jeremy Deller, then the gallery funding was withdrawn or something happened to stop that happening. I like collaborating with other artists, I think it’s interesting, I like to see their interpretation of my work. Stella Vine did a painting from one of my pictures, Peter Blake did an Ian Curtis one, and George Shaw. So I have worked with other people, and I just say ‘well, you do what you want‘. I’m able to phone people to realise dreams sometimes, so that’s quite a fortunate position. In six months time something I’ve never dreamt would be offered to me or existed might be, so I’m too pragmatic to sit there dreaming.

Madonna, 1984. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

What do you see for yourself in ten years?
I don’t know. Sadly I’ll probably still be photographing Johnny Marr or Morrissey or Bernard Sumner or I don’t know, who knows. I’m happy doing what I do, so I don’t see the need to want to change it, I don’t feel dissatisfied with what I’m doing.

What epitaph on your grave?
I don’t care. I’ll never see it.

Bez, 1990. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

Kevin Cummins was born in 1953.
He lives in London.

website:
http://www.kevincummins.co.uk/

gallery sales:
http://www.paulstolper.com/

books:
The Smiths and Beyond, 2002
We’re Not Really Here: Manchester City’s Final Season at Maine Road, 2003
Juvenes, 2007
Manchester: Looking For the Light Through the Pouring Rain, 2009

The author would like to thank Erin Lawlor for her precious help

Joy Division, Hulme, Manchester, 6 January 1979. Courtesy of Kevin Cummins

Ed Hall

banner: a flag or other piece of cloth bearing a symbol, logo, slogan or other message.

May Day march, London, 2008. Courtesy of Ed Hall

In the past, banners have been mainly used for processions in a religious context. Nowadays as the banners usually hang on the walls of churches, religious processions tend to fade away. You can still find some revival in the French region of Brittany with the so-called pardon. This kind of pilgrimage has some celtic origin and happens on the occasion of main religious celebrations such as the Assumption on the 15th of August. On the same day the unconventional bikers pardon takes place in Porcaro. Established in 1979 by abbot Prévoteau -a biker himself- in order to celebrate Fatima and the bikers’ guild, this event is now gathering 20 000 people each year in the small village of Brittany. Although quite different from the current social parades, pardons are also events involving people sharing a mutual cause or celebration.

According to Dr Myna Trustram, organisations in the UK that have a marching tradition have made banners for centuries in order to identify themselves. This includes trade unions, friendly societies, temperance groups, co-operative societies, Orange orders, suffrage, women’s and peace organisations and political parties, but also non-political organisations like churches, chapels and Sunday schools. Mines, mills, factories or messages are part of the traditional iconography.

May Day march, London, 2008. Courtesy of Ed Hall

London, Thursday 21 January. It is almost 11:00 AM and I have an appointment with Ed Hall, the famous banner maker. He has been designed and created banners for more than twenty years for ‘organisations committed to social and political causes‘. Some of his work is now among the Folk Archive and part of the British Council collection. An important retrospective of his banners has been displayed on the occasion of From One Revolution To Another, the show curated by Jeremy Deller and collaborators at the Palais de Tokyo in 2008. Nearly 40 of them were hanging in the gallery.

A little early on the schedule, I watch with an amused eye a typical Trafalgar Square scene: tourists taking snapshots of themselves with the four lion statues guarding Nelson’s Column. As expected, Ed is on time.

The following conversation took place at Maison Bertaux, a famous tea house à la Française in the presence of two cups of tea, an apple crumble and a giant chocolate éclair.

Tell me about yourself
I started work as an Architect in 1968 and I became involved with trade union work when my Department was threatened with closure under Margaret Thatcher. I became a trade union official and began to make posters and banners. In the last three years I have been able to exhibit work in some beautiful venues, including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
As an Architect I worked in the public sector, for Liverpool, Greenwich and Lambeth. My work was mainly housing, including at the old Tudor Dockyard in Woolwich and a large site of new houses in Brixton. I also designed a Health Centre and a small shopping mall.

What inspires you?
It started of with very basic trade union causes: people having proper conditions to work in, or political causes where people had been hurt by the police or forcedly imprisoned or have relatives who died in police custody. Although those causes have an impact on very few people, I think they are important causes. Anyone of us can get caught up in one of these incidents or trade union disputes.

How long does it take for you to make one banner?
The ones I am making at the moment which are combinations of sewing, appliqué work and painting are about a hundred hours for each banner. That does not mean to say working seven hours a day. I often start at seven and finish at eleven.

Procession, Deansgate’s Manchester, 5th July 2009.
Organised by Jeremy Deller for the Manchester International Festival
The Big Issue magazine is sold by homeless and vulnerably housed people to make them earn a legitimate income

What is a typical day of work?
I get up as early as I possibly can. The morning for me is the best moment. If I have to paint something or think hard about something, it is always in the morning. In the afternoon I try to do less demanding things like straightforward sewing, making the pose or sewing banners together but I think most people find that in the afternoon the motivation fails a little bit.

What are your projects?
Well I have been lucky in working on behalf of Jeremy Deller and other exhibition work. But my ordinary work is still producing trade union banners which I now have quite a backlog about two years! I am now trying to catch up with this backlog and complete the ones I have promised. And I have a long way behind.
The organisation called the British Council which has spent 75 years buying British artworks. The objective of the British Council is to spread British music, arts, culture in the wide world. They have a collection of paintings which they are showing at the Minsheng Art Gallery in Shanghai; I think as a fore runner to the forthcoming Expo 2010 taking place in Shanghai.
The British Council bought the Folk Archive which Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane have put together and which included some of my banners. And because it now belongs to the British Council, they are taking it to Shanghai. They have also asked me to provide other banners, about twenty of them which I believe will hang in an high space in the Minsheng Art Gallery.

How important is art in your life?
It is very important. I was an architect. I think the English are remarkably ignorant about design and the arts. I mean if you look at countries like France or Sweden where art seems to be part of their lives. In England it is completely separated, art is often ridiculed and people do not really value it very much. I think designing things and putting ideas into a visual form are very important.

Could you review your work in a critical way?
Some things I do were very successfully. There have been things I have done which have not worked very well. I admire painters like Diego Velázquez and Toulouse-Lautrec as they could draw hands, faces and hairstyle easily. I would just love to have that skill: drawing figures in an easy direct way. I would give anything to be able to have that skill!

What is your dream?
I have to say, I am in a very fortunate position. I love doing very prestigious things and that entrance banner on the Palais de Tokyo was a dream. How many people get the chance to have something they have made hanging in a big public gallery in Paris? If I can have any more of that kind of thing, that is my dream.

From One Revolution To Another, Palais de Tokyo, 26 Sept 2008 – 18 Jan 2009
Ana Lopez works with sex workers to demand trade union recognition and safety. This banner was used in Soho, Central London

Did you fulfill your childhood dreams?
The only way I can answer that is, if my life stops now I would be quite satisfied. I have no great unrealistic dreams. I am not gonna compose the Fifth Symphony or paint some day like Rembrandt. I think people must recognize their limitation and be realistic. I am not smug or self satisfied though. The last two or three years I have been extremely pleased about what was happening to me.

What do you see for yourself in ten years?
If people are working hard and producing things, well they like some recognition for  working hard and the things they have made, that people can enjoy and look at. If some more of the recognition took place, I would be extremely happy.

What epitaph on your grave?
There should be no sentimentality about people dying. When they are gone, they are gone, you know. Very few people in the world have never die because they left something so important that you could not say ‘Oscar Wilde is dead’ or ‘Toulouse-Lautrec is dead’ because they live on through their work. I think there must come a point when the last banner I made gets parade in public – and it might be hundred of years after I died! – but when the last banner is used in the street or whatever, then I will take this as the epitaph. (laughs)

ABOUT FOLK ARCHIVE:
Currently on view at the Minsheng Art Gallery, Shanghai: The Future Demands Your Participation
28 January – 21 March 2010
British Council
http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-aad-folk-archive.htm

Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane, Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK, Book Works, 2005, 3rd edition, 2008

ABOUT BANNERS:
Books:
Hazel Edwards, Follow the Banner: An Illustrated Catalogue of the Northumberland Miners’ Banners, Carcanet Press, 1997
John Gorman, Banner Bright: an Illustrated History of Trade Union Banners, Penguin Books Ltd, 1986

Museums:
Pump House: People’s History Museum, Manchester
http://www.phm.org.uk
The People’s Story Museum, Edinburgh
http://www.culture24.org.uk/sc000138

Yuko Nasu

‘To draw someone we do not know, who might be someone special is my interest‘
Yuko Nasu

Imaginary Portrait Series, 2006, oil on paper, 18 pieces (50 x 40 cm each). Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

Born in Hiroshima, Japan.
Lives and works in London.

She studied visual design at Kyoto City University of Art until 1997. She used to work as a graphic designer but soon realised that she wanted to do more physical work than being in front of a computer all day long.
She eventually relocated to London in 2005 to study fine art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
Yuko Nasu makes portraits. It includes mostly oil painting but sometimes it can also be water colour.
She uses wild brushstrokes and unique colour combinations work to create a camouflage that reveals its subject. Her technique and its effects may remind Edward Munch’s The Scream where the brushstrokes are sweeping and becoming broader. The features of the face are almost removed, what is left is a trace of a mouth or an eye. We cannot say the works look ‘unfinished‘ though, it is rather that Yuko sees only the essential. We are not quite sure if some erasing is in process.
She had her first UK solo show Imaginary Portraits at Zizi Gallery in 2007. Last year she gained some media attention with a portrait of Kate Moss (KM2), although she stated to be ‘unfamiliar with the cultural references or celebrities in contemporary British media stories‘.
She was exhibiting at Art Projects during the last London Art Fair (13-17 January 2010).

Imaginary Portrait Series, KM2, 2009, oil on paper, 50 x 40 cm. Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

I was in London some time ago and I met Yuko on this occasion. The following discussion took place at her studio.

Tell me about yourself
I graduated in visual design at University. I was making posters, advertisements etc. Then I got a job at a TV game company in Japan, I was a 3D, computer graphic designer. I worked there during five years, but I was really bored, working with computers and digital things you know. I was thinking, ‘I would like to do something different, and use my hands to produce something more organic‘. So I quitted the company and I decided to come to the UK. I applied to Saint Martins College. I managed to get in and I studied for one year. Then I took a one-year class at Chelsea College of Art and Design as an international postgraduate. I finished in 2007 and I became an independent artist.

When did you start being interested in painting?
I already liked painting when I was a kid but I was not really serious about it, it was just for fun. I really started to think about painting when I was working for the TV game company. From that time I got interested in arts in general.

What inspires you?
It depends. Basically all that is energetic: it can be music for instance.

How long does it take for you to make one painting?
Sometimes it takes me a month or even more. But I can also make one painting in about fifteen minutes or less. I would say it depends on if I’m lucky or not!

Do you sometimes get back to your work to modify something -a detail?
Once it is done, I do not get back to it. Otherwise I could ruin the painting.

Imaginary Portrait Series, Y, 2007, oil on paper, 50 x 40 cm. Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

What is a typical day of work?
I have a part time job, three days a week, so I am able to dedicate to my work on the evening sometimes. I have a studio so I spend basically the whole day painting when I am not working. I would come in the morning and I would stay until 8:00 PM. Then I go back home. But there is no rule.

What are your projects?
I just exhibited at London Art Fair. Right now I would like to experiment something different, I have been painting the same way for quite some time. I think it is time for a change. For the past year I have been painting in a different way, more abstract. It does not have a title yet.

How important is art in your life?
We cannot live without art, can we? (laughs).
More seriously I am happy when I am painting.

Could you review your work in a critical way?
That is a difficult question… Looking at my work in an objective way is something I am not sure to be able of doing. Maybe I would say my work is getting more sophisticated. And at the same time it is loosing some primitive expression I suppose. As I am becoming better at painting, I have to be cautious not to loose the primitive energy. Otherwise my work could become boring.

1108b, 2009, oil on paper. Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

What is your dream?
I would like to retire in Hawaii when I turn sixty or seventy! Why not?
More seriously, my current dream would be to become a successful artist.

Did you fulfill your childhood dreams?
Growing up I wanted to be a lawyer. I found myself being fascinated with people working in politics or business, all the executive people you know. But I doubt I will fulfill that dream and I like this idea somehow. I prefer to be a painter, working with colours and canvases.

What do you see for yourself in ten years?
I have no idea. I cannot tell exactly what I will be doing in ten years. I wish I could stay in London or at least in Europe. Japanese and European cultures are totally different. There are so many ways of thinking here. But I think I will eventually go back to Japan someday.

What epitaph on your grave?
Rest In Peace? (laughs). We do not have this tradition in Japan. There are no inscription on the grave. We keep ashes in graves, in the past we buried dead bodies but nowadays we do not. I do not want to have my grave and I want my ashes to be thrown in the air or in the ocean. I wanna be nothing after death. It might be a sad thing to my parents because keeping ashes and having a grave is a traditional way for any family in Japan.

website:
http://yukonasu.com/

Shelf at Yuko’s studio. Picture by the author.

Benjamin Sabatier

Benjamin Sabatier’s recent show at the Point Ephémère, Paris was titled Manifeste.
You could see the exhibition space from the outside through a large window. White placards with messages were displayed against one of the walls. These messages were collected in various public toilets in the city and the recording was the ceaseless flow of a flush.
The placards are usually used in the public sphere to express demands during protests; for the show they recorded a series of anonymous messages left in an intimate place. Benjamin Sabatier refers to the placards as screens, showing some odd collective word with a sense of humour.

Manifeste, exhibition view at the Point Ephémère, from 13 November to 08 December 2009

Benjamin Sabatier in conversation with Adeline Wessang

Background?
I graduated from Rennes 2 University with a postgraduate certificate and an aggregation in Arts, which also allows me to be a teacher. I’m teaching at La Sorbonne and I’m also involved with the CERAP (center of studies and research in Arts).

DIY?
I want my work to be accessible, it is very important. It is part of what I call the ‘aesthetics of the viewer’. When confronted to my work, the viewer is not in virgin territory: he sees things he knows about because he sees them regularly but this time they are displayed in unusual positions and combinations.
To me, art is a transcription of the real, a way of looking at the world around us. Indeed art allows to access the real in an unusual way. The beginning point does exist concretely: materials, objects or processes that everyone is supposed to know. Then they are used in a different way in order to show some specific aspects and to include the viewer as one of the modalities for the work.
The fact that my work is usually ‘reproducible’ is also a ‘way of doing’, not far from what we call ‘Do It Yourself’.
Besides, a part of my work fully includes reproducibility and is displayed in the form of kits. It seems usually ‘reproducible’ because you can easily imitate the pieces.

Rondin Les 3 Suisses II, 2004
mail order catalogue and half log, 25 cm height, 41,7 cm diameter
Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

The viewer can say ‘I could do it myself’, and he is right.
DIY means ‘Faîtes-le vous-même’ in French and I think that it is not only some activity you do on Sundays. It is a true way of thinking, referring to hippies’ utopiae from the 1960s. All the counter culture from the next decades comes from that. The French translation for DIY Faîtes-le-vous-même is more appropriate than bricolage or système D.
It is also a way of doing hand made things, finding again some autonomy and being more manual. I am referring to the Whole Earth catalog (Access to tools), first released in 1968. It was the first mail-order catalogue, written by Stewart Brand and it has quickly become the counter culture bible in the US.
The book is not only a catalogue of tools, it is also filled with visionary ideas and articles about Earth protection, bio farming, self-sufficiency, self-education, cooperation…
DIY philosophy is in progress. Not only it is a way of reducing costs but it is also an alternative to mass production. It is no accident that it is currently regaining across the Atlantic. It is supposed to be some kind of reaction to consumer society excesses and its dangerous effects on the planet. Moreover, it is a survival strategy when there is an economical crisis.

IBK?
I was looking for something which could involve the audience in the making. It was also a way of delegating to the audience some part of the work (DIY again). First I created a decorative pictorial pattern with pins stuck into the wall. Then I asked myself how I could distribute this work created onto a specific location. I ended up with a kit. This reproduction system quickly interested me more than the product itself. I was inspired by a firm like IKEA. I produced multilingual guides, I designed tools to make the assembling easier. Each object is edited in three copies. Two copies: the work and its reproduction. From three copies, I would say it is about editing with the concept of a product.
The kit questions about the work status as a merchandise, as well as the current functioning of consumption and the marketing strategies.

Installation de présentation du Kit
pins, cardboard box, instructions book, pattern and tools
Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Then I designed a logo: IBK (International Benjamin’s Kit). The name came to me naturally, with reference to IKEA and to Yves Klein’s IKB (International Klein Blue). He is to me one of the first artists who has thought about the market value in a relevant way. Let’s remember his show at the Apollinaire gallery, Milan in 1957. Eleven blue Monochrome were displayed, all the same size but at different selling prices. Klein thought the paintings were not exactly the same because they were perceived in a different way by the audience. The price is part of the work.
Of course IBK is also a reference to Walter Benjamin, whose name is similar to my first name.
IBK is more than a brand, it is a concept, a kind of vision which is related to DIY in my opinion.
IBK has also became a structure which produces things and allows to collaborate with people on different projects.

Entrepreneur?
For the past years I have been called an artiste entrepreneur. It is true that I do have my say on economy and business. But I am not an entrepreneur per say, such as famous artists like Jeff Koons or Takashi Murakami. IBK is not a firm, socially or economically speaking. It is more of a concept, a work of art in itself. But as IBK has some of the characteristics of a firm, I guess it is easier to say I am an entrepreneur.
I do not intend to pretend to be one (it has been done previously a lot by others) and I do not want to mimic current economic structures. I am not interested in mimesis or copy. I would also like to add that I am not attracted to this world, I am rather interested in the fact that it cannot be ignored because it is the main structure for individuals in current society.

Performances?
The relationship to the body is important in my work. I am also interested in the relationship with materials. This confrontation or association leads to produce shapes. Learning something is what I am looking for and I could say that I am challenging myself each time I am starting a project. I feel like I always gain some knowledge, which can be practical but more often critical. Then again DIY is not far.  Carrying rocks, piling Scotch-tapes, sticking nails, drawing pins, sharpening pencils… All my projects have repetitive gestures and you will not be surprised to learn that performance art is special to me.

The End, DIY 1388, 2008
hammer, nails, pattern, instructions book and cardboard box, 88 x 162 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

In 2008 I performed at the MAK, Vienna. It was called SUPERPARTYCYCLES and I had a free hand. I wanted to turn this several-stages old bunker into some place for partying. On the last floor in an empty room I put 80kg of pallet (my own weight) covered with sheets of coloured paper. I was continually tearing up the sheets to make confetti. After a while, a few people in the audience imitated me by tearing up the paper sheets. The performance was working as long as more and more people were participating. The destructive gesture towards some manufactured material changed the performance into a party.
Long before the performance 35 Heures de travail (2002) at the Palais de Tokyo (I was entirely sharpening pencils manually during 35 hours), I produced some works involving sharpened pencils. Each one was then stored into a plastic bag mentioning the brand of the pencil. I put the bags at the supermarket so the consumer could buy his pencil already sharpened! That was the whole idea. The product was somehow already a waste in that context. The consumer became a viewer and gained some critical opinion towards mass consumption.
I dropped about fifty of these bags in various supermarkets.
I never saw someone actually staring at my bags, I never waited to see people’s reactions… But it does not matter. This project was indeed my first real performance…
I am interested in putting objects or products back in some different kind of consumption cycle or giving these things a second life. I’m thinking of Paul Auster’s In The Country of Last Things (1989) which French title is Le Voyage d’Anna Blume. Main characters are scavengers who survive by collecting garbage in a city that has collapsed into chaos and disorder. I was more interested in the title, referring to Kurt Schwitters’ An Anna Blume (1919), his book of poems and collages. This was the starting point for my thoughts on merchandise and packaging, further extended with kits.

Objects?
I collected squashed things in the street (Etalage, 2004). These flattened objects seemed to be images of merchandise to me.
They were not objects per say anymore, as they had lost their shape and their use at the same time. They had become two dimensional pictures, colored spots on the ground. I placed them into plaster blocks to make them look ‘marketable’ like bricks or boxes. Then I displayed them stacked on pallets as if they were average goods.
Later I purchased a large amount of objects in blister packaging. Blister is a rounded, bulging, usually transparent structure for display and protection of packaged products. I use blisters as molds and I pour cement inside. I did an Action Man series. It is all about packaging, box, carriage and merchandising the world and Art in general.

Action man I, 2007
Blisters series, cement, 30 x 22,5 x 10 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Recycling materials is interesting. A few years ago I used to keep mail order catalogues such as La Redoute or 3 Suisses for recycling. The reason I was collecting them was mainly because they don’t last. Plus I like when the materials are available in a large amount easily.
Sheets of the catalogues were stored in ice cubes boxes, each sheet in one single compartment. I was trying to focus on short-term preservation by reproducing seasonal advertising commonly used for these mail order catalogues: Fall/Winter, Spring/Summer. In the end, I think that the whole idea was also referring to the Whole Earth Catalog.

Bacs 019, 2005
Bacs series, ice cubes boxes, paper and wood, 95 x 95 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Packaging?
Yes indeed packaging is recurring in my work: bags, blisters, kits…
In contemporary art history the box cannot be ignored. I am thinking of Duchamp’s Boîte en Valise, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, Manzoni’s used cans, Judd, Arman, Raynaud… It would be good to write a book on the subject.
I am still working on packaging. The box which protects and informs on its content at the same time, must be practical and a promotional material.
Right now I am more interested in its usage, that is to say carriage and stocking.
I fixed climbing grips to rocks (Prises, 2008). These colored grips usually allow the body to climb on the wall. The relationship to the body is somehow perverted since in that case, the grips allow to carry the object. I wanted to add some sort of ergonomics to it.
In a way, this project extends a part of work of art history which is said to have influenced the shape of the work of art. Take donkey painting for instance, it allowed paintings to be spread widely. It also demonstrated the connections between work of art and merchandise.

Typical day?
I spend some time on my computer, mainly sending emails, getting informed. The network matters. I have been in touch with artists from abroad. I can also work on projects from a distance, sending patterns by email allowing the work to be done without me. I like this circulation linked with ubiquity.
I do a lot of sketches. I put up them on a notice board in my studio, along with notes. Sometimes I can give up on some ideas then I will go back and make them happen. I do not work on a project if its achievement is not possible.
In the end I would say that I always focus on gathering and stocking.

Tableau n.3, 2008
felt-tip, pencil, pinned paper and wood, 150 x 150 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Projects?
I am currently working on a performance which will take place at Centre George Pompidou in February 2010.
I am also supposed to exhibit at Delicatessy gallery in Cracovia, Poland. Delicatessy refers to food shops, such as butcher shops. So the name has to do with merchandise and it is really interesting to me.
Moreover, I am currently focusing on projects involving brick as main material. Brick  does have attractive features: it is a module, made to fit in man’s hand, you can handle it easily for carrying. So we go back on the carriage thing, and the relationship with the body (previously discussed) and more specifically with the hand. In conclusion I would like to quote the essay written by art historian Henri Focillon L’Eloge de la Main (1934).

This interview has taken place in Benjamin’s studio on November 2009.

Benjamin Sabatier, born 1977.
Lives and works in Paris.

IBK:
http://www.ibk.fr/

Jérôme de Noirmont art gallery, Paris:
http://www.denoirmont.com/

Catalogues:
FRAGILE, Ville d’Issoire edition, 2008
S.A.V., Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont edition, 2005 (sold out)
Peinture en Kit, Noirmont Prospect edition, 2003 (sold out)

IBK’s Scotch Tower V, 2007
Scotch-tape rolls, concrete and PVC, 241.5 x 17 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Benjamin Sabatier (version française)

Au Point Ephémère, à Paris, se tenait récemment l’exposition Manifeste, une proposition de Benjamin Sabatier.
La salle d’exposition était visible depuis l’extérieur par une grande vitrine. Le long d’un des murs, on avait disposé des pancartes blanches sur lesquelles des messages étaient projetés. Ces messages avaient été récupérés dans diverses toilettes publiques de la ville et la bande sonore de l’écoulement continu d’une chasse d’eau emplissait l’espace.
Les pancartes, qui sont traditionnellement utilisées dans la sphère publique pour exprimer des revendications lors de manifestations, recueillaient ici une série de messages anonymes laissés dans un espace intime. Les panneaux sont envisagés par l’artiste comme des écrans de projection, accueillant une parole collective décalée et non dénuée d’humour.

Vue de l’exposition Manifeste, du 13 novembre au 08 décembre 2009 au Point Ephémère

Benjamin Sabatier en conversation avec Adeline Wessang

Parcours ?
J’ai étudié à l’université de Rennes 2, j’ai obtenu un DEA et une agrégation en Arts Plastiques, ce qui me permet d’être également enseignant. J’enseigne à Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne et où je fais partie du CERAP (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches en Arts Plastiques).

DIY ?
Que mon travail soit accessible est une chose très importante pour moi. Cela fait partie de ce que j’appelle “l’esthétique du spectateur”. On peut dire que celui-ci se trouve, face à mes oeuvres, en terrain connu. Il est confronté à des choses qu’il connait bien, qu’il côtoie régulièrement mais dans des postures et des associations qui posent un certain nombre de questions.
L’art c’est pour moi une retranscription du réel, qui médiatise une manière de voir le monde. L’art est par là un accès singulier au réel. Le fait de partir d’un réel commun – que ce soit des matériaux, des objets ou des procédures, que tout un chacun est censé connaître et reconnaître- et de le réemployer afin d’en révéler certains aspects est une manière d’intégrer le spectateur comme l’une des modalités de l’oeuvre.
Que mes oeuvres soient dans l’ensemble “reproductibles”, c’est aussi une “manière de faire”, proche de ce que l’on appelle le “Do It Yourself”. D’ailleurs certaines de mes oeuvres intègrent totalement cette reproductibilité et se présentent sous forme de kits. Mais le plus souvent les oeuvres semblent “re-productibles” car elles sont facilement modélisables.

Rondin Les 3 Suisses II, 2004
catalogue de vente par correspondance et demi rondin de bois, hauteur : 25 cm, diamètre : 41,7 cm
Courtesy de la Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Le spectateur peut ainsi dire “moi aussi je peux le faire”, et il aura tout à fait raison.
Le DIY qui peut être traduit en français par “bricolage”,  n’est pas seulement pour moi, une activité à laquelle on s’adonne le dimanche. C’est plutôt un véritable mode de pensée, qui se réfère aux utopies Hippies des années soixante, dont toute la contre-culture des décennies suivantes est issue. En Français, la traduction littérale de DIY : Faites-le vous-même est plus porteuse que celles de simple bricolage ou système D.
C’est aussi une manière de faire “hand made” pourrait-on dire, qui est un moyen de retrouver une autonomie, une certaine “manualité”, face au réel contemporain, d’avoir prise sur lui.
Je pense ici au Whole Earth catalog, sous-titré Access to tools dont la première édition date de 1968. Ce catalogue de vente par correspondance, le premier du genre, inventé par Stewart Brand, est devenu très vite la bible de la contre-culture aux Etats-Unis.
Le catalogue n’est pas seulement un réservoir d’outils, il est aussi rempli d’idées visionnaires. On y trouve des articles sur la préservation de la planète, l’agriculture bio, l’autosuffisance, l’auto éducation, la coopération…
La philosophie du DIY est une pensée en devenir. C’est en premier lieu un moyen de réduire les coûts mais c’est aussi un moyen de proposer une alternative à la production de masse. Ce n’est pas un hasard si elle fait un retour en force outre Atlantique. Elle est considérée comme une réaction aux excès de la société de consommation et ses effets dévastateurs sur la planète mais elle est surtout en période de crise une stratégie de survie.

IBK ?
Je cherchais à produire une oeuvre qui impliquait le spectateur, qu’il puisse s’investir réellement dans la fabrication. C’était également un moyen de lui déléguer une partie de l’oeuvre (encore le concept du DIY). Dans un premier temps j’ai créé une forme picturale décorative avec des punaises plantées directement au mur. Je me suis ensuite demandé par quels moyens je pourrai diffuser cette oeuvre réalisée in situ. J’ai donc proposé cette oeuvre en kit. Ce système de reproduction m’a intéressé très vite davantage que l’objet produit lui-même. Je me suis inspiré du mode de fonctionnement d’une entreprise telle que IKEA, en éditant des systèmes de montage multilingues, en créant des outils conçus pour faciliter le montage. Chaque objet est diffusé par série de trois. Un objet édité en deux exemplaires, c’est l’oeuvre et sa reproduction. A partir de trois, je dirais que c’est une pratique proche de l’édition, avec le concept de produit.
Le Kit interroge le statut de l’oeuvre d’art en tant que marchandise ainsi que le fonctionnement contemporain de la consommation et des stratégies marketing afférantes.

Installation de présentation du Kit
punaises, boîte en carton, manuel de montage, patron et outils
Courtesy de la Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

J’ai ensuite créé un logo : IBK (International Benjamin’s Kit). Le nom m’est venu assez naturellement, en référence à IKEA donc, et également à Yves Klein et à son IKB (International Klein Blue). Il est, pour moi, l’un des premiers artistes qui pose d’une manière pertinente la question de la valeur marchande de l’oeuvre d’art; rappelons cette exposition qui a lieu à la Galerie Apollinaire à Milan en 1957, pour laquelle il présentait onze monochromes bleus de taille identique à des prix différents. Selon lui, les toiles n’étaient pas exactement les mêmes, car appréciées de manière différente par le public. Le prix fait partie intégrante de l’oeuvre.
Bien évidemment, le choix du nom est aussi une référence à Walter Benjamin, dont le nom se confond avec mon prénom.
Plus qu’une marque, IBK est avant tout un concept, une sorte de vision, que je rapproche du concept de DIY.
IBK est devenu aussi une structure de production qui permet de travailler collectivement sur différents projets.

L’artiste entrepreneur ?
Depuis quelques années, on a tendance à me ranger dans la catégorie de l’artiste entrepreneur. S’il est vrai que j’ai un regard particulier sur la question de l’économie et de l’entreprise, je ne suis pas un entrepreneur à proprement parler, comme peuvent l’être certains méga-artistes contemporains, tels Jeff Koons ou Takashi Murakami. IBK n’est pas une entreprise, dans le sens où on l’entend dans la réalité sociale et économique, c’est davantage un concept, ou une oeuvre à part entière. Mais dans la mesure où IBK adopte certains codes de l’entreprise et les met en jeux il est facile de le réduire à un questionnement sur celle-ci.
Mon but à travers cela n’est surtout pas de rejouer, une énième fois, au chef d’entreprise ni de mimer le fonctionnement des structures économiques actuelles. Je ne suis pas dans la mimésis, copier ou représenter la réalité ne m’intéresse pas.
Je tiens aussi à dire que je n’ai aucune fascination pour cet univers. Il m’intéresse simplement par le fait qu’il est aujourd’hui une figure incontournable qui structure l’individu dans la société.

Performances ?
Tout mon travail s’intéresse au rapport au corps et par là même, d’un geste à une matière ou à des matériaux.  Cette confrontation ou cette association amenant à la production de formes. L’idée de l’apprentissage n’est pas étrangère et je pourrais dire qu’à chaque fois que je m’attelle à une nouvelle oeuvre, je me lance une sorte de défi. Et il en sort toujours une connaissance, qui peut être simplement pratique mais souvent s’avère critique. Là encore, le DIY n’est pas loin.
Porter des rochers, empiler les rouleaux de scotch, planter des clous, des punaises, tailler des crayons… Les gestes répétitifs sont présents dans tous mes projets… et ce n’est pas une surprise si la performance est un medium particulier pour moi.

The End, DIY 1388, 2008
marteau, clous, patron, manuel de montage et boîte en carton, 88 x 162 cm
Courtesy de la Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

J’ai effectué une performance en 2008 lors d’une exposition au MAK de Vienne intitulée SUPERPARTYCYCLES. L’institution m’avait donné carte blanche.
Je souhaitais transformer momentanément cette institution qui est un ancien bunker de plusieurs étages en un lieu festif. Au dernier étage de celui-ci dans une immense salle vide, j’avais disposé une palette de 80 kg (mon propre poids) de feuilles de papier de différentes couleurs que je déchirais de manière continue, pour en faire des confettis.  Au bout d’un certain temps, des spectateurs m’ont imité et ont également commencé à s’attaquer aux blocs de feuilles en les déchirant. L’installation, et par là la performance, fonctionnait tant qu’il y avait des gens pour l’animer.
Par un geste destructeur vis-à-vis d’une matière sortie de l’usine, l’action s’est véritablement transformée en fête.
Bien avant la réalisation de la performance 35 Heures de travail (2002), présentée au Palais de Tokyo (ou je taillais entièrement et manuellement des crayons de papier pendant 35 heures), j’ai produit une série d’oeuvres à partir de crayons taillés ou épluchés entièrement. Chaque crayon était ensuite placé dans un sachet plastique sur lequel j’apposais une étiquette portant la marque du crayon ainsi que ses caractéristiques. Je replaçais ensuite le tout dans les rayons de supermarché, ce qui symbolisait la possibilité du consommateur d’acheter directement son crayon entièrement taillé. La marchandise pointait dans l’espace marchand son devenir de déchet. Ce qui pouvait déjà représenter pour le consommateur devenu spectateur le premier pas vers un regard critique envers la consommation de masse, envers ce qu’on peut lui vendre.
J’ai déposé une cinquantaine des ces sachets dans différents Super et Hyper.
Il faut ajouter que je n’ai jamais vu un consommateur s’arrêter devant mes sachets, je n’ai jamais attendu pour voir les réactions… Mais je ne suis pas sûr que cela soit vraiment important.
En fait, cette expérience était ma première véritable performance… On peut associer cela à une sorte d’actionnisme, comme lorsque l’on parle d’actionnisme politique.
Réintégrer des objets ou des produits dans un cycle de consommation ou redonner une seconde vie aux objets m’intéresse. Je pense ici au titre d’un ouvrage écrit par Paul Auster : Le Voyage d’Anna Blume (1989). Les principaux personnages, des chiffonniers, survivent au sein d’une société anéantie en ramassant des déchets. Ce n’est pas l’ouvrage qui m’intéressait particulièrement, mais davantage son titre, qui est une référence directe à Kurt Schwitters et son recueil de poèmes et collages : An Anna Blume (1919). Cela marque le début de ma réflexion sur la question de la marchandise et de l’emballage, que j’ai poursuivi avec les œuvres en kit.

Objets ?
J’ai collecté une série d’emballages trouvés dans la rue qui avaient la particularité d’être écrasés (Etalage, 2004). Ces objets aplatis me sont apparus comme des images de la marchandisation, des représentations de celle-ci.
Ils n’étaient plus des objets à proprement parler, ils avaient perdu leur forme et leur fonction. Ils étaient devenus des images bidimensionnelles, des tâches colorées sur le sol. J’ai ensuite intégré ces divers emballages dans des blocs de plâtre afin de leur donner un aspect “commercialisable”, comme des briques ou des boîtes. Pour pouvoir notamment les réintégrer à un circuit marchand. Je les ai d’ailleurs exposé superposés les uns aux autres sur des palettes de transport comme de simples marchandises à consommer.
Dans une série suivante, j’ai acheté une importante quantité d’objets vendus sous blister en magasin. Le blister est la coque thermoformée qui emballe l’objet afin de le protéger. Il en épouse grossièrement la forme et permet de voir l’objet car il est généralement transparent. J’utilise ces blisters comme moules et j’y coule du ciment. J’ai notamment réalisé une série d’Action man. Cela s’inscrit bien évidemment dans ce questionnement sur l’emballage, la boîte, le transport et de manière plus générale, la marchandisation du monde et de l’art.

Action man I, 2007
série Blisters, ciment, 30 x 22,5 x 10 cm
Courtesy de la Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Je m’intéresse également aux matériaux de récupération. Il y a quelques années, je conservais les catalogues de vente par correspondance tels que La Redoute, 3 Suisses etc. que je recyclais en œuvres. Je les collectai au départ principalement  parce qu’ils ont une durée de vie très courte et sont par cela, disponibles rapidement en grand nombre. Ce qui est souvent la première chose qui attire mon attention sur une classe d’objets : il faut que la matière première soit disponible facilement et en grande quantité.
Des assemblages de bacs à glaçons servaient à contenir des pages de ces catalogues, à raison d’une feuille par compartiment. Il s’agissait ici d’évoquer, par un même geste, l’idée d’une conservation à court terme qui affichait sous un aspect pictural, le travail publicitaire des graphistes selon les différentes saisons : automne-hiver, printemps-été, caractéristiques de ces catalogues de VPC.
Cette idée d’utiliser des catalogues de vente par correspondance n’était d’ailleurs pas sans rapport référentiel au Whole Earth Catalog.

Bacs 019, 2005
série Bacs, bacs à glaçons, papier et bois, 95 x 95 cm
Courtesy de la Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Packaging ?
Oui l’emballage est un terme qui revient beaucoup dans mon travail : les sachets, les blisters, les kits…
La boîte est d’ailleurs une figure incontournable de l’histoire de l’art du XXe siècle.
Je pense à la Boîte en Valise de Duchamp, mais aussi à Warhol et ses Brillo Boxes, à Manzoni qui utilise des boîtes de conserve, Judd, Arman, Raynaud…  Enfin il serait intéressant d’écrire un livre à ce sujet.
Je continue de travailler et de questionner cette notion de packaging. Cette boîte qui protège et doit informer sur ce qu’elle contient. Elle doit être fonctionnelle et informationnelle, et dans le même temps elle est un support publicitaire.
En ce moment je m’intéresse davantage à sa fonctionnalité; la boîte servant à faciliter le transport, à protéger et à stocker les marchandises qu’elle contient.
Sur une série de rochers (Prises, 2008), j’ai fixé des prises d’escalade, ces mêmes prises colorées qui servent normalement à porter le corps sur le mur d’entrainement. Le rapport au corps est donc détourné puisqu’ici, ce sont ces prises qui permettent de transporter l’objet. Je voulais associer à ces rochers une certaine ergonomie. Comme si l’oeuvre d’art intégrait, à ses possibles transports et déplacements, des questions très pragmatiques, comme lorsque l’on doit déménager son frigo.
Il prolonge quelque part tout un pan de l’histoire de l’oeuvre d’art qui influencerait la forme de l’oeuvre. La création du tableau de chevalet, par exemple, qui a permis de faciliter le transport et les transactions des images peintes, est une manifestation matérielle forte des relations qu’entretiennent l’oeuvre d’art et la marchandise. Dans cette perspective, l’art aurait tout à voir avec le capitalisme marchand et son fonctionnement.

Journée type ?
Je passe beaucoup de temps sur l’ordinateur, pour communiquer, c’est-à-dire envoyer des mails, m’informer. Le réseau est très important, j’ai pu être mis en contact avec des artistes qui sont à l’étranger par exemple. Je peux également développer des projets à distance, en envoyant un patron par e-mail et l’oeuvre peut ainsi être réalisée sans que je me déplace. Cela me permet de multiplier les projets sans avoir à être présent physiquement. J’aime beaucoup cette idée de diffusion qui permet véritablement le don d’ubiquité.
Je dessine énormément. J’ai un panneau dans mon atelier qui me permet d’afficher tous mes croquis, mes notes prises lors de mes lectures, des projets d’exposition. J’accumule ces dessins, qui expriment des idées, qui sont parfois abandonnées pour un temps, avant que j’y revienne pour décider leur réalisation concrète. A part certains projets particuliers qui n’ont pas besoin de lieu particulier pour s’actualiser,  je ne réalise pratiquement plus rien dans le vide. C’est seulement quand la proposition d’exposition est concrète que les oeuvres se matérialisent et que je me permets de passer à la réalisation.
Ce qui revient à poser des questions toujours hautement pratiques, et non sans importance dans mon travail,  celles de l’accumulation et du stockage.

Tableau n.3, 2008
feutre, crayon, papier punaisé et bois, 150 x 150 cm
Courtesy de la Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Projets ?
Je prépare actuellement une performance pour le Centre Pompidou qui se déroulera en février prochain.
J’ai aussi une exposition prévue à Cracovie en Pologne à la galerie Delicatessy pour 2010. Le nom de “Delicatessy” désigne normalement des magasins d’alimentation, de type charcuterie. Ce nom est donc lié au système marchand et m’intéresse particulièrement.
D’autre part, je suis actuellement en train de réfléchir à des projets utilisant la brique comme matériau principal. La brique présente des caractéristiques attrayantes : c’est un module, fabriqué pour épouser la forme de la main, on peut donc la manipuler facilement et la transporter. On revient là encore à la question du transport, mais surtout à une problématique plus générale qui est perceptible dans l’ensemble de ma production, c’est le rapport au corps, et à la main de manière plus spécifique. Je citerai en mot de conclusion l’essai de l’historien d’art Henri Focillon L’Eloge de la Main, paru en 1934.

Entretien réalisé en novembre 2009 à l’atelier de l’artiste.

“J’entreprends cet éloge de la main comme on remplit un devoir d’amitié. Au moment où je commence à écrire, je vois les miennes qui sollicitent mon esprit, qui l’entraînent. Elles sont là, ces compagnes inlassables, qui, pendant tant d’années, ont fait leur besogne, l’une maintenant en place le papier, l’autre multipliant sur la page blanche ces petits signes pressés, sombres et actifs. Par elles l’homme prend contact avec la dureté de la pensée. Elles dégagent le bloc. Elles lui imposent une forme, un contour et, dans l’écriture même, un style.”
Henri Focillon, introduction à L’Eloge de la Main (1934).

Benjamin Sabatier est né en 1977.
Il vit et travaille à Paris.

IBK :
http://www.ibk.fr/

Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris :
http://www.denoirmont.com/

Ouvrages monographiques :
FRAGILE, Édition ville d’Issoire, 2008
S.A.V., Édition Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, 2005 (épuisé)
Peinture en Kit, Édition Noirmont Prospect, 2003 (épuisé)

IBK’s Scotch Tower V, 2007
rouleaux de scotch divers, béton et PVC, 241,5 x 17 cm
Courtesy de la Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

Felix Schramm

Felix Schramm utilise des morceaux de mur, de la peinture, des châssis, et du bois pour réaliser ses installations sur site spécifique. Il crée l’illusion d’une architecture accidentée, en montrant ce qui semble être la conséquence d’un accident qui serait arrivé à l’intérieur de l’espace d’exposition. Schramm travaillant de façon très méthodique, la réalisation des sculptures est toujours précédée d’un long travail d’observation du site. De manière générale, les titres de ses œuvres font écho à ce qui aurait pu se passer : la collision avec Collider (2007), ou la corrosion, avec Soft Corrosion (2006). Schramm propose un point de vue différent, une alternative à l’appréhension de l’espace. La perception de son travail varie selon l’endroit ; sa réception à San Francisco (où les tremblements de terre sont fréquents) ne sera probablement pas la même qu’à Paris. Son travail peut être considéré comme une tentative de pénétration du white cube, coûte que coûte, afin d’en bouleverser l’ordre établi. (Le white cube est un espace aux murs blancs prétendu neutre, utilisé depuis l’après-guerre comme référence pour les galeries d’art ou les musées).

Pour l’exposition “Spy Numbers”, qui se tient au Palais de Tokyo du 28 mai au 30 août 2009, il présente une installation monumentale située à la fin du parcours. Omission est une sculpture réalisée à partir de matériaux de construction tels que le plâtre, le bois et la peinture.
La plupart du temps, les limites entre l’intervention de l’artiste et l’architecture du bâtiment sont difficiles à discerner. Son travail crée une tension; en effet, les formes structurelles des murs, des plafonds ou des sols sont tordues, voire éclatées, laissant la prédominance aux angles qui jaillissent littéralement. La perception de la sculpture n’est jamais la même, au fur et à mesure que l’on se déplace, les arêtes des angles se modifiant avec le regard.
Schramm propose au visiteur de faire l’expérience physique de la tension en le confrontant à une pièce exprimant à la fois la fragilité et la menace, l’ordre et la déstructuration, la construction et la déconstruction. La sculpture apparaît comme une menace potentielle, pouvant éventuellement à tout moment s’effondrer sur le visiteur. C’est l’espace d’exposition dans son ensemble qui est remis en cause, s’agit-il toujours d’un lieu parfaitement sûr pour contempler l’œuvre d’art ?

vue de l’exposition au SFMOMA, 2007. Courtesy de l’artiste

INTERVIEW
Adeline Wessang : Nous allons parler dans un premier temps de votre parcours. Vous avez étudié aux Beaux-Arts de Düsseldorf. Quelle était votre spécialisation ? Etait-ce la sculpture ?

Felix Schramm : Aux Beaux-Arts, j’ai principalement suivi des cours de peinture. Les étudiants expérimentaient des techniques différentes. La plupart de mes professeurs étaient peintres ou typographes, ce n’était donc pas une classe spécialisée dans l’enseignement de la sculpture. Je ne sais d’ailleurs pas si c’était une bonne chose !

AW : L’école de photographie de Düsseldorf a-t-elle joué un rôle dans votre formation ?

FS : Je ne pense pas que l’école de photographie de Düsseldorf ait directement joué un rôle. Bien sûr, elle a instauré des nouvelles techniques et une qualité qui ont permis de considérer les choses sous un angle différent, et également dans la façon de documenter son propre travail. Mais je pense que son influence s’arrête là.

AW : En quoi l’enseignement de Jannis Kounellis a-t-il influencé votre travail ? Je pense à cette citation de Kounellis : “Ce n’est pas des matières que je pars, c’est de l’espace. Depuis que les artistes sont sortis du tableau, c’est l’espace lui-même qui est le cadre, qui est la matière.”

FS : L’espace en lui-même est toujours important lorsque vous faîtes de la sculpture. Selon moi la sculpture autonome n’existe pas. Kounellis a évoqué ce sujet, mais du point de vue du peintre, car il se définit lui-même comme un peintre. Son avis concerne l’affranchissement du peintre vis-à-vis du tableau.

AW : Avez-vous vécu une expérience, artistique ou non, qui vous aurait marqué ? Ou qui serait en tout cas fondatrice de votre travail ?

FS : Pour moi, il a toujours été très important de savoir que les moments les plus intéressants se produisent lorsque l’on ne s’y attend pas. Donc si l’on a une idée précise, on essaie de la réaliser au moyen de différentes techniques, mais c’est toujours la partie la plus ennuyeuse. Les choses se produisent par accident. Un des moments les plus étonnants pour moi s’est produit alors que je commençais à travailler à construire des morceaux de sculpture in situ. Je les ai arrachés et je ne m’attendais pas à ce résultat, cela m’a paru plus intéressant que les choses que j’avais expérimentées auparavant.

AW : Comment en êtes-vous venu à réaliser ces sculptures ?

FS : C’est également arrivé par accident. J’étais en train de construire une sculpture que j’ai commencé à démolir avec l’aide d’un ami en utilisant des masses en bois. Le lendemain matin, je voulais continuer à en arracher des morceaux, c’était étonnant de voir le résultat concret dans la salle. A partir de ce moment là, j’ai reconsidéré tout mon travail.

AW : Pouvez-vous nous parler du processus de création d’une sculpture et des matériaux utilisés ?

FS : Je commence toujours de la même manière : dans un premier temps, je regarde l’espace où je pourrais construire une sculpture. Ensuite je travaille avec des maquettes à petite échelle. C’est une étape très importante car lorsque l’on travaille avec des petites maquettes, on peut expérimenter des choses que l’on ne peut pas concrétiser à grande échelle, de manière plus extravagante. On peut transformer, déplacer, séparer plus facilement. C’est un moment spécifique où l’on peut travailler avec la notion de hasard. Sculpture et hasard sont effectivement assez contradictoires si l’on travaille à grande échelle. Mais à petite échelle, on peut faire de nombreuses tentatives, des incidents peuvent survenir mais on peut en tirer parti facilement, sans se préoccuper de la gravitation ou des matériaux. Oui, c’est plus facile. Voilà pour le début. Ensuite on passe à grande échelle sur place car la maquette est seulement présente au départ. Je ne sais jamais dans quelle mesure la pièce va être modifiée pendant la réalisation.
En ce qui concerne les matériaux, j’utilise des structures qui peuvent supporter des plaques de plâtre ou dans ce cas précis du bois ou du métal. Je préfère la plaque de plâtre comme matériau principal car elle a une qualité architectonique je suppose. Lorsque l’on en casse une, elle reste en place, elle ne ressemble pas à une brique cassée. C’est aussi un matériau qui permet de jouer avec les ombres. J’utilise également beaucoup de couleurs, j’y toujours attaché beaucoup d’importance car elles permettent de transmettre des informations.

AW : Avez-vous choisi l’endroit dans lequel vous exposez ? Ou est-ce Marc-Olivier Wahler (directeur du Palais de Tokyo) qui vous a proposé cet endroit précis, au fond de la salle ?

FS : Oui, Marc-Olivier m’a proposé dès le départ d’exposer tout au fond de la verrière. Entre temps nous avions pensé à différents endroits possibles mais en fin de compte, nous sommes revenus au premier choix.

AW : Comment définiriez-vous le rapport entre votre travail et l’espace d’exposition ?

FS : Il y a toujours un rapport direct ou indirect à l’espace, il s’agit de tirer parti des possibilités offertes par l’espace, ses proportions et la lumière.

AW : Pouvez-vous nous parler de la pièce réalisée pour Spy Numbers ?

FS : Comme nous avions décidé de réaliser cette œuvre à la fin de la salle d’exposition, c’était particulièrement intéressant de tirer parti de la courbe qui se trouve juste avant. C’était pertinent d’essayer d’imaginer comment la prolonger, sans pour autant en conserver le même angle. Essayer de transférer la dynamique de l’espace dans la sculpture, afin que le spectateur se rende compte que cette courbe ne fait pas partie de l’architecture du bâtiment mais qu’elle résulte plutôt des forces qui s’échappent de la sculpture. C’était intéressant pour moi de créer une certaine tension dans l’espace, instaurer un espace effrayant. A une certaine distance, on a une vue d’ensemble et si l’on s’en approche, on ressent un impact physique.

Omission, 2009, vue de l’exposition Spy Numbers au Palais de Tokyo, image de l’auteur

Né en 1970.
De 1991 à 1993, il étudie à l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de Florence. Il poursuit son cursus sous la direction de Jannis Kounellis à l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Düsseldorf de 1993 à 1997. Obtient ensuite différentes bourses d’étude, qui lui permettent d’effectuer de nombreuses résidences d’artiste en Allemagne et en Italie. 2006 est l’année où il obtient le prestigieux prix Piepenbrock, qui récompense un artiste de la scène allemande contemporaine pour ses sculptures.
Vit et travaille à Düsseldorf.