My work deals with the appropriation of the physical world. Everything began with the idea of “matter-colour”. In fact, when I was in first year I was fascinated by Yves Klein and his concept of pictorial sensitivity. In fact, he conceived his IKB monochrome not only as a painting but as a pictorial sensitivity fragment. For me, like other materials, colour has to be full of presence. A colour is perceptible, odorous, haptic, you almost want to taste it. I was very disappointed by the colours coming from the tubes that you can buy in a fine art shop. That's why I decided to make my own colour baptised, in tribute to Klein, IBB (International Bourgin Blue). IBB is made from marine varnish, turpentine and ultramarine pigments. Because of the varnish solvents and turpentine, the smell of IBB is very aggressive. I have recently been searching for natural pure “mattercolours” like beeswax.
Sheep wool soaked in IBB and pallet,2010-11
Beeswax (in progress),2011
This first experience of materiality has led me to a real quest for materials. I really need to feel my materials like Wolfgang Laib when he goes to a flower field in order to collect pollen. So when I go to the forest, I carry the heavy soil, moss … It's important for me. I create my own repertory of materials. It's after having been to different building material stores that I decided to realize the sculpture 45cm³ of moss. In fact in this kind of store, all the materials are sold in m³, m² and particularly the natural insulating materials, which interest me more and more, like hemp wool, wood wool or sheep wool. So I decided, me too, to realize a compression of pure matter. “Pure” is also an important word for me because it is at the moment when the material is still pure that it is at it's most physical.
Clay from Grimbosq, 2010
45cm³ of moss, 2010
I'm as alive as my materials. IBB has an aggressive smell, beeswax can move according to the temperature, linseed oil flows and never dries … I don't care about “accident” because that's life, we must look at the “immediate”. I hate the conservatism of museums. A sculpture, a painting, has to be alive.
Hemp wool soaked in linseed oil, 2011
Sheet of beeswax with wood quoits, 2011
“Art is a fight between matter and spirit”, Michelangelo. Furthermore, I would like to write that “art is a fight between matter and body”. Indeed, I believe that it must be a real link between the material and the artist's body. That's why I often choose materials which require a certain force from me. In February I did an internship at a stonecutter for two weeks. It was a very interesting experience. I think stone represents really well the Michelangelo's sentence. When you are in front of this hard and heavy pile of centuries (we mustn't forget that stone is the result of years and years of sedimentation), it's difficult to be obvious. You have to realize a pertinent action revealing your act but especially the material qualities. That's the case when I saw an old stone block showing the hardness of the exterior and the softness of the interior. One action suffices to reveal the material. I like the idea of the List of verbs of Richard Serra.
Stones, 2011 This is especially important as a woman. Unfortunately most of the women artists succeed showing themselves nude or realizing little installations about their private life. There are very few women who are recognized as a real sculptor. Frequently we stay in the representation, the image of the woman's body. For a long time, painting and sculpture were reserved for men. That internship has also emphasized the idea of transversality which is very important in my output. An artist has to feed himself/herself with everything. The all physical world must be his/her inspiration. I don't make art in order to make art. It would be awful otherwise. I've always hated the pigeonholes that school creates for the subjects (maths, french, biology …). An artist painter has to look at the house painter's work as Jean Dubuffet wrote in 1963 in L'homme du commun à l'ouvrage. I put up with a kind of artist like Francis Alÿs which is “without a permanent studio”, I am a W.P.S. When I see him pushing his big ice cube in the streets of Mexico (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing, 1997), I wonder “what artist ! That's a real artist !” that is to say someone who is living now. The figure of the lonely genius in his studio is finished ! We are in 2011. The artist has to be outside, he/she has to experiment in/with the physical world. I speak about that when I realize my sensitive walks. I'm climbing a hill with the sun in front of my eyes, I run in the forest during the hunting season, I walk in the coldness of the snow, in the instability of the sand, on the shap shells, in the cold and rough sea of October.
Sensitive walks, 2009-11
In fact, as Yves Klein wrote in Le vrai devient réalité (“Real becomes reality”) in 1961, an artist has to be a reporter. He/she has to become a “sponge-man', someone who absorbs the physical world and expectorates it, sublimating it with alchemy. “The poet has to become a seer thanks to a total disruption of his senses” said Arthur Rimbaud. It's not a coincidence if most of my
materials are absorbant/absorbing.