Cyprien Chabert Artist. Conversation by Romaric Tisserand & Margherita Ratti. Contemporary Action 20 by Romaric Tisserand

Conversation _01 with Cyprien Chabert

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Cyprien Chabert reproduces great physical gestures following the influence of Matisse ‘gestes’ on reappropriated wall surfaces. His wall drawings, which he calls “Kilometres of ink” are an opportunity to repeat the Memory of forms which he has acquired, in order to recreate vast worlds of vegetation. Throughout the development of his work, plant life has become the chosen aesthetic to present a vision of a “satisfactory” utopia. Employing old-fashioned techniques of engraving and using charcoal, Cyprien Chabert allows us to be overwhelmed by the shapes he fills space with. This conversation opens to different and “possible” investigations across new lands and landscapes...

R_ Nowadays, we live in a world that has been mapped and in which there are no longer any unknown places. We are thus obliged to look for an alternative kind of “elsewhere”. You offer a new utopia through plant life. What is your relationship with this reappropriated nature? C_ When I arrived at the school of Fine Arts, I was mainly doing black and white photography but also a lot of drawing. So I tried to find a medium which could bring the two together. So I chose etching, which offered, like photography, scales of grey, acid passages, and a format close to drawing. I began, spontaneously, by drawing plants. In the beginning, I wanted to produce ornate landscapes, in the old-fashioned, traditional way, because I found this technique appropriate. I wanted to suggest a certain exoticism, an “elsewhere”. I love gardens because they contain a situation which I am fond of, that of crossbreeding, being between two things. Between two cultures, north-south, that’s the situation you find in a garden: between the forest and the town, between the wild and civilisation. I think of Le Notre, when he was creating his gardens, perfectly arranged according to the compass, and around those gardens there were wolves and bears. It was a case of subjugating and civilising that natural, violent world. It’s a sort of reconquest of the wild. Alain Roger expressed it very well: “our motorways are cathedrals, the most beautiful viewpoints of the landscape”. These motorways are often hidden, camouflaged by a kind of plant placebo. We should not consider our roads and our progress as scars but as wrinkles. R_ However, it’s the aesthetic of your work that first meets the eye, isn’t it? C_Yes, but the “aesthetic” includes ethics, a moral, a challenge. I arrive with nothing but a piece of charcoal, before a white space which I fill up, generally in quite a short time. I saw the exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly and Matisse. It had a great impact on me. Previously, I had been like many other people, working with the same range of colours, loving Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, paintings like the Gris de paine”, the jaune de Naples”. Then I read Matisse, who spoke of the Memory of forms. That’s why I call some of my drawings “a kilometre of ink” because they are marathons, real long-distance efforts. M_ Breath, breathing and physical gestures are key elements of your approach, but somewhat curious for those who approach your work from the visual, aesthetic point of view. Behind this aspect there is physical exercise.

Conversation_01 © Contemporary Action _ January 2005 _ www.contemporary-action.com _ info@contemporary-action.com

C_ The essence of drawing is not in making shapes but in shaping one’s own outlook, a visual sharpness which comes only from the effort of physical gestures, from gymnastic movement. Within the word “aesthetic”, there is an “ethic”, a moral. To illustrate this idea there is a wonderful quotation from Oscar Wilde, writing to Whistler Gibbs about the London fog, in order to demonstrate the differences people feel about their surroundings: “London’s fog is a stylistic effect to grasp for cultured people, and a cold to be caught by those who have no culture”. Proust was one of the first to write about moving landscapes; the countryside seen from a vehicle, the changing gaps between the trees and a church. This was not aesthetic at the time, but it is the intention, the moral and ethics, which have made it become cultural heritage. M_ On the other hand, you produce your murals in unreal dimensions. How can the ‘geste’ open up on such surfaces? Is it to do with the Memory of forms? C_ It certainly is. I studied all the murals in Asia, Pompeii, the shapes which I try to make my own. I went to see the work of people like Sol LeWitt and Penone. That forced me to work on my own shapes, even though they are organic-based, and to think about sculpture and playing with proportions. Even if some murals display very dense and stylised vegetation, I increasingly come back to the ‘geste’, plants being a kind of pathway into abstraction. At the outset, it’s simply a case of producing lines while I hold my breath. R_ Your work is rendered ephemeral by the use of graphite. Is this fact integral to your approach or is it a constraint you have to deal with? C_ The fact that my work is ephemeral reinforces the connection with ethics, morality. In the end it’s the ‘geste’ that matters. The thing that’s magical with this work is the fact that I produce murals with charcoal and that the garden can reclaim itself. In this way I maintain a certain control and if nobody were to touch it, it would stay there forever. The prehistoric drawings in the caves of Lascaux were done with charcoal. It is an extraordinary medium that nothing will change – except for a finger! M_ Do you know about the places which you reappropriate? C: That depends on the place. The work I was able to do with Vincent Barré, a former architect who works on new towns, made me aware that, you don’t plan anything at the outset, you ask questions: you find out who lives there, whether it’s a place which has been closed down, what its history is. In this context my plants can be awakened and brought to life… I look for a context first with my work. I never know what I’m going to do at the beginning. R_ To come back to the idea of breathing, the ‘geste’, are you employing any particular strategies at present? C_ With the Ready-made, art without strategy no longer exists. An artist with something to express, however simple it may be, is forced to use the strategies of his or her time in order to make him understood. R_ Is it a case of entering the system in order to change it? That comment reminds me strangely of Jenny Holzer’s piece “Use what is dominant to change it quickly”. C_ Quite right, I call it the technique of centrism, the technique of the Trojan horse. This strategy is directly linked to my being mixed-race. Rather than causing a reaction, I would like to be understood straight away by appearing seductive, I want to please from the very first reading, I want to listen to people although I’m well aware of what I’m going to suggest. R_ Are you looking for a simplistic compromise? C_ It’s the pressure of being of mixed race, the refusal to marginalize myself. R_ Does nature offer any unknown strategic models which man imitates? C_ What interests me about plants is the strategy they employ to occupy spaces. The fact that an umbrella pine tree can create a roof and a column, that a cypress tree creates another kind of shape.

Conversation_01 © Contemporary Action _ January 2005 _ www.contemporary-action.com _ info@contemporary-action.com

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The ferns in Fontainebleau are very common plants. They are prehistoric plants found all over the world which have been able to spread due to their central stalk with its internal piping system. With each project, I try to find out about plants in order to get to know their strategy, if I’m looking, for example, to create a roof, a floor or columns. I would like, though the medium of the garden, to deal with the notion of the wild, and how the wild can be tamed. Orchids are flowers whose roots are not under the earth. They have very few leaves and they get nourishment from their roots above the ground. The orchid family also includes a lot of carnivorous plants, since they need more than photosynthesis to survive. It’s a superb strategy. M_ I think of the Americans with their big malls and closed towns, and the inside of big shopping centres which give you the urge to fill them with plants. C_ Like at Les Halles, where François Blanc installed walls of plants. That was strategic as well, to choose Amazonian plants which grow far away from sunlight, to use them for making walls of plants which need no more than 1% sunlight. R_ When you create your visual spaces, are you always of a peaceful disposition? C_ I am not always peaceful. I have been able to create animal natures. I often think, for example, that the fern looks very much like an octopus. Nature is anthropomorphic. It was Nietzsche who said that nature is never seen objectively, always through a prism, a window, a subjective viewpoint. Even with land that has never been worked, you can find a foreground and a background and your own route through by looking at it. That was my strategy for Cergy Pontoise, creating a panoramic garden with a floor and a roof. I planted Scots pines and ferns arranged like a Parisian district. M_ What will your next ‘geste’ be? C_ I am evolving and I always find a way forward, new forms of expression. My work happens when it’s being done. M_ Could you ever abandon plants? C_ I hope to disengage from plant life. My work is always about articulating between two and three dimensions. This is also the case with my asphalt carpets which are first produced as drawings and later installed in three dimensions. I have been working lately with wood. I think that plants, like landscapes, should lead me towards abstraction. Plants are just a pretext. I would like to escape from the pressure of floral decoration. What I like is not drawing flowers, fruits and leaves, but rather the way in which they occupy space. I don’t work on their images, but on the way they curve and bend. Plants offer the most beautiful shapes, thrusts, and confused structures within space. When you go into a forest which has never been exploited by man, you make your own sense of it. My latest drawings are lines which are leading me towards abstraction. It’s a case of following a line, a breath. I don’t think about the final picture, it is the breath which controls it and the eye which brings it to a close. Romaric Tisserand & Margherita Ratti / translated by Tim Mc Leish / January 2005

4_ « Entraînements » (Trainings), 2005 5_ « Autoportrait », 2001 6_ « Entraînements » (Trainings), 2005