Your artistic approach in a few words ? ( VERSION FRANCAISE ICI )
It is a research work based essentially on the experimentation of processes leading to the creation of pictures. I am exploring the photographic medium, primarily in its founding principles, its potential, its boundaries. I am also very interested in its relationships with drawing, painting, moving picture.
Your work is organized in series : what gives rise to a series ? How does it take its place among the others ?
Each series results from the exploration of a technical process, an idea, or a graphic territory. They may generate another one, by subdivision.
But they are not in hermetic compartments. Rather, I envision them like families, groups of items with permeable borderlines and flexible links, sharing some characteristics and differentiated by others.
Do you work on several series at the same time ?
Yes, I often develop several series in parallel, they constantly nurture each other. I am interested in what their interrelations either formal, conceptual, or emotional draw in outline.
Why do you use Latin, sometimes Greek terms, to name your series ?
It came to me quite spontaneously, maybe a remnant of my scientific studies. The Latin language lends itself well to classification and naming.
I am sensitive to the duality of the Latin word. It has a quality of simplicity and effectiveness that allows to describe precisely an object, an action, a sensation ; and, in contrast, the poetic and unreal halo of an ancient language.
It resonates its other possible meanings in Latin but also those of its derivatives. It has the potential to expand the semantic field, thus the scope of possible interpretations.
Texo can be translated by « to weave », « to warp a loom ». Would you please introduce me to this series ?
I created large paintbrushes composed of hundreds of optical fibers, in arrangements I can vary. I load them with colorful light sources conceived beforehand. I move the paintbrush in the dark while the camera records its luminous trail.
This series allows me to work on color arrangements in an original way.
Using the optical fibers I can actually weave the colors together.
So, we have the technical description, but how do you interpret the outcomes ? What do you get from them ?
My interpretation is personal, intimate. Each of us reacts, lives our exposure to an artwork on the basis of our life experience, our dispositions at the moment, our culture, and interprets it accordingly. It is for each a unique experience, an encounter, and I think it is best to live this first moment without guidance.
Later on, of course, additional information is interesting, but I prefer it to go through a conversation.
I am not trying to convey a specific message. I select, among the results of research, those that appear meaningful, depending on conscious and unconscious criteria. I materialize « possibilities » and offer them to the viewers, among whom I stand.
I get out of it the pleasure of exploring and confronting the material - even though it is mostly photons here - and see something interesting appears once in a while.
« Appears once in a while »… Does it mean that you do not fully control the process ?
I partly control it, I lead it. I only work on processes integrating one or more aleatoric or entropic variables at some steps. I need an element of chance to be part of the equation, since realizing something that I could completely foresee doesn’t feel appealing to me. I need to be surprised to some extent, to discover something unexpected.
Is the choice of « puncta » a reference to Barthes’ punctum ?
Not specially. Among the several meanings of « punctum » in latin, those of « dot » and « pin-hole » in particular led me to chose it. The « puncta » photographs are created using a kind of mutant, giant pinhole camera, with thousands of openings rather than just one. Instead of focusing on the resulting picture I focus on these « optical centers », so on the space separating the image from its object, the object here being the direct light of a projector.
A word on Lichens ?
The Lichens stand apart from the others series, being photograms (here in the sense of: « images taken from a film ») coming originally from a study of «palette film», such as those I use to feed the light paintbrushes (see: Texo). They are unexpected pictures born inside the preparatory work of another series.
They freed themselves from their status of raw material.
I named them Lichens for their resemblance with some vegetal lichens.
Finally, what is art to you ? How would you define it ?
I have, of course, no axiomatic definition to offer. Art is plural ; many definitions, sometimes contradictory, are relevant.
That being said, for me it is above all a space of freedom, thinking, reverie, poetry, of proposals, discoveries, experiences, encounters… That leaves the door open to ambiguity, contradiction, the unspoken, uncertainty…