Interview on the exhibition at LAAC
Extract from the catalogue of the anniversary exhibition of the LAAC (Lieu d'Art et d'Action Contemporaine) in Dunkirk, with an interview about the photographic series Parades and the works of the artist Jean Dewasne.
MR. Your project puts photographs from this series in dialogue with a selection of works by Jean Dewasne: how did you choose this on your first visit to the LAAC? Were you already familiar with this work or was it a discovery?
PYB. I was in contact with Dewasne's work for years without knowing it, when I was working for the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. Indeed, Dewasne was responsible for the colouring of the Centre Pompidou, but I only recently learned of this. Otherwise, my knowledge of Dewasne was reduced to the memory of a gleaming Antisculpture exhibited in the Cambrai museum.
After my visit to the LAAC, I quickly felt that it would be possible to create a real encounter between my images and the ten or so abstract works by Dewasne. I wanted to create a dynamic composition with sequences, scans, chords, overlaps; a sort of musical stave that would unfold on the surface of the wall.
MR. Your photographs give particular importance to the geometric arrangement of forms, echoing the geometric compositions of Dewasne's paintings. In your images, the formal dimension of the objects - and even the bodies - photographed takes precedence over their use value, bringing these images closer to a form of abstraction. What dialogue is established between your two approaches, around this common geometric dimension?
PYB. The power of Dewasne's work lies in the fine articulation of the geometric surfaces between them, in the care taken in the construction, in the reduced choice of colours and in their shaping without depth. From this controlled rigour emerges a work without any rigidity, at once energetic and surprisingly smooth.
For my part, I produce a photograph that puts reality at a distance. Parades respects a strict shooting protocol: frontality, studio lighting, an invisible glass window set up between the camera and the truncated subject... With this device, I am both the photographer and the motif of my images, the actor and the director; the magician! Thanks to the self-timer, I have full capacity to compose my images, to create my illusionist games. The objects and materials in the images are often not very identifiable. There is a real desire here to cut short language, to avoid any interpretation that might seem too obvious. Also, despite their powerful realism, a certain form of abstraction runs through the photographic series.
MR. In your exhibition you present enlargements of details from Dewasne's series Computers Renault, which was designed to be painted in monumental dimensions in the public space. Similarly, the photographs from the Parades series that you have chosen to show opposite were originally conceived to be presented in the public space. Can you tell us more about this common interest in work related to public space and its architecture?
PYB. Dewasne had a real predilection for creating in the public space. As a communist, he wanted his art to be part of everyday life and to invest in architecture. He notably created long monumental friezes in the Grenoble library, in the Hanover metro... Another example is the set entitled Ordinateurs Renault (Renault Computers), which was created for the staff of the Régie Renault. These works, with their impressive formats, are real pieces to be physically visited. They call for the mobility of the eyes and bodies. By enlarging the details of this study, I simply wished to evoke this monumentality in the service of an art with a social and political scope.
My Parades series was in fact initiated on the occasion of an exhibition in the JCDecaux lollipops in Cambrai and took into consideration the very device of urban furniture. The initial idea was to create visual traps, to show bodies and objects enclosed in the narrow and constrained space of the advertising panel. My wish was to address passers-by by parodying fashion photography to some extent. At the same time, the social status of the enclosed bodies was pointed out: are we dealing with a model, a homeless person, a migrant, an artist? With these immobilised bodies, as if caught in flagrante delicto, I probably sought to accommodate a social truth in the form of the billboard.
MR. You pay particular attention to the hanging, with a composition that visually articulates your works with those of Dewasne: can you tell us more about this?
PYB. I thought of this hanging as a piece in its own right, where each element would participate in the whole. I wanted to offer something very serious, playful and dynamic at the same time. I tried to set up a set of correlations between the painted works, the sculptures and the photographs so that their proximity on the same wall would contribute to the creation of a set of resolutely abstract flat surfaces with strong powers of attraction. I think I was all the more entitled to produce this "visual collage" because Dewasne liked to make photomontages of his own works in urban universes that were both whimsical and unrealistic, but always imbued with a real sense of vitality.
MR. You mention a common affinity with mechanics and the industrial world. What role does this industrial, mechanised imaginary play in your practice?
PYB. Dewasne makes the materials of industry his own, from sheet metal, isorel, glycerophtalic lacquer to the mechanical parts he takes from factory workshops. The forms and energy of industry permeate his entire oeuvre. His formal vocabulary and motifs are indeed those of the world of flow, circuits and cogs.
The images in the Parades series are more concerned with the mechanics of the body. When I made this series, I had in mind certain modernist ballets such as Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet, or Parade by Satie, Cocteau and Picasso. The gestures and movements of the various protagonists appear mechanical, constrained by imposing costumes. The bodies of the Parades series, stopped in their tracks, are also somewhat disturbing to Dewasne's vigorous works. Does the era of growing insecurity in which we find ourselves today question Dewasne's era and his unshakeable faith in industry and progress?
Read the printed interview in french : Catalogue LAAC