MOREJE
MOREJE – WHEN MOSAIC ENABLES DIALOGUE BETWEEN ERA
October 2017 – 2252 words
COURSE
How did you become an artist?
I've always drawn, a field where I felt free to answer to no one, contrary to what school expected. Back then, I imagined myself as a painter, with a hat and an easel, painting from life like Cézanne. I initially took art classes in Montparnasse, run by the City of Paris. I painted compositions and worked from life. I passed my Baccalaureate and the entrance exam for the Beaux-Arts, but since I couldn't pursue both paths, I enrolled at university because my parents thought it was more serious. There, I discovered contemporary art with avant-garde professors like Michel Journiac and art historians like Jean-Michel Palmier. It was an encounter with conceptual art, Daniel Buren, Richard Long, and Land art.
After completing a master's degree at Paris 1, I passed the competitive exam for the City of Paris, then earned my diploma from the École des Beaux-Arts. For three years, I took courses in morphology, perspective, stained glass, textiles, and also painting with Henri Cueco and Matthey de l'Etang. I studied mosaic, which was part of the painting curriculum, with Riccardo Licata, who had been teaching since the 1960s. He was a painter who had always considered his pictorial work across different media, which was reflected in his studio, which was full of easels.
Then I discovered a medium. Mosaic is a collage, composed of materials, that allows you to work with anything, without it being a simple copy of a painting. It allows you to play with the very essence of the object. I started to wreak havoc in the studio, breaking bottles, going to fetch coal from the banks of the Seine. I realized that mosaic had missed out on all the avant-garde movements of the 20th century.e century and contemporary art. Despite some transformations, it remained confined to an almost antique dimension. I quickly became interested in the very notion of medium, questioning its various combinations. Almost naturally, I linked it to architecture and urban planning, and thus ventured out into the world of Fine Arts to confront it with the environment. I considered myself more of a visual artist than a mosaicist or graffiti artist, evolving through modes of expression that corresponded to what I wanted to say. We can therefore distinguish two main types of training among urban artists: those who come from the Fine Arts, like Mesnager or the VLP, and those who evolved after starting out with graffiti.
MOSAIC IN URBAN ART
You say that mosaic is a monumental art, meaning that it is not only used in large formats, but above all possesses a memorial function. The medium itself carries memory.
In the 19the and at the beginning of the 20the In the 19th century, there was a revival of the decorative arts in Paris. Stained glass, frescoes, and mosaics were then called monumental arts. This didn't refer to a gigantic scale, but to the fact that mosaics, like monuments, are linked to memory. My second observation was that small creations can have a semantic or visual impact as strong as immense works: it all depends on what is done, how, and why. These three parameters allow us to engage the viewer, which remains the primary goal of art.
In this respect, our collaborative work with Zloty is interesting because, with his Ephemerals, he brings a speed of gesture, while I introduce the question of time through the use of mosaic. I work particularly with the idea of layering, like the layers uncovered during archaeological digs. I had prepared supports that allowed for this interplay: the Ephemerals appear either beneath the mosaic, like something ancient just revealed, or on top, like graffiti. It's a play on time and memory. The material itself raises this question, as one can work with industrial stoneware, but also with materials that can be millions of years old: I sometimes even use fossils! The resulting tension is interesting because mosaic, being a collage, allows for the assembly of fragments from different periods of time.
How do you attract the attention of passers-by when your works are often small in size?
Public space allows for direct communication, as the viewer is face to face with the artwork, but also indirect communication, as I don't know who will see it. My works are small-scale, on a pedestrian level, and are often positioned at eye level. Some are even at a child's eye level. My aim isn't to place them high up so they can't be removed. Thus, some pieces are only visible up close, while others are perceived from further away. For example, I sometimes include small gold tesserae because I know they catch the light. Just one or two are enough to draw the eye as soon as a ray of sunlight passes by, even from two meters away. But this can also be the case with a dissonant or vibrant color. In my view, the house or building is also part of the picture, into which I insert the piece like a painter composes their canvas. I don't always know the result when I begin, and the viewer can trace this process by looking at the mosaic. The creation of the work over time is thus visible.
The mosaic also has the particularity of not being visible in the same way depending on the distance from which one stands.
The mosaic, like pixels, works on the principle of optical fusion: from a distance, you see a color, and up close, points. What interests me is that the work can be perceived differently depending on the viewing distance, just as in painting you find an overall view and a view of the details. If I want a blue effect, I won't choose just one: I'll use grays, blue-green tones, lavender blues… Each element of the work was placed separately and was the subject of a deliberate decision. Duchamp said: Art is a series of choices. The positioning of an element is a choice that can be found when reading the work.
REVERSIBILITY AND EPHEMERAL NATURE
“The choice of whether or not to use reversible mortars or adhesives cannot be separated from the artwork. (…) Even a minimal collage shows and covers at the same time, hides or reveals. (…) Reversibility gives the possibility of erasure, of disappearance.” The reversible and non-permanent nature of the solution is important in your approach.
Reversibility is important. It allows us to restore what was there before. That's what I learned from the mounters at the Beaux-Arts, whose job is to attach one support to another. They taught us how to prepare dozens of different adhesives. Indeed, some 19th-century adhesivese The past few centuries have been disastrous because they could no longer be removed, and if you wanted to take down the artwork, you had to tear off the support. Now, reversibility has become a fundamental principle in restoration. For stone walls, I prepare a mortar that will hold the piece in place but can be removed with a small chisel and a brush. You can no longer see where my Courbet was installed in Place Vendôme because the trace is gone. This reversibility allows us to respect both the support and the location.
While mosaic is a medium that could last, you are choosing to make it ephemeral.
The ephemeral nature of art is inherent to the work. It is as important as color or material. Even in the studio, the color of a canvas will change over time. Outdoors, the artwork is exposed to wear and tear. Collage allows us to cover, to reveal and conceal at the same time. But working outdoors also raises the question of rights. Even if there is nothing on the wall, we are obscuring something that was done before us. Even the most ordinary wall was the subject of a choice: the choice of the bricklayer, the choice of the urban planners who wanted it to be brick or painted. In judging this choice, we enter into considerations that are both aesthetic and moral. But by what right can I cover this wall if people don't want it? We then impose ourselves on others with a form of violence. The counter-argument is that urban planners don't consult us either when they draw up their plans. That's true, but it's impossible to answer that without considering the ethics of the artist, who is responsible for his works, their meaning, what they represent, and their context.
WALKING AND CONTEXT
Why is the idea of wandering and journeying important in your artistic approach?
Course "Mosaic" is the term that gives its name to a series of works, but it can be composed of one or more geographically dispersed mosaics. Each project is different and is built around its own unique theme. Charlie's project was complicated to create. I wanted to make a mural to connect it to history, while also incorporating small pieces of memory card to highlight current events and obscure the separation between ancient and contemporary memory. I also wanted faces in color to demonstrate that they were symbolically still alive. Finally, I didn't want a rectilinear arrangement, because these weren't people lining up.
How does the mosaic become established in the chosen locations?
Urban art isn't limited to the city; it can be found in the countryside just as easily. The only thing that matters is the meaning you want to convey, but you can express yourself anywhere. That's why I don't consider myself strictly an urban artist, because I don't only work in the streets. I try not to repeat myself, which makes me difficult to identify. I don't have a logo, and my work is my signature: for example, I installed pieces by the sea; they got wet with the slightest wave and ended up being washed away.
The choice of location is therefore significant.
In the city, installing a work of art in an upscale neighborhood or a more run-down area doesn't carry the same meaning. The Esplanade des Invalides doesn't convey the same significance as the Trocadéro or the Rue de l'Orillon in Belleville. The location is therefore crucial to the message it conveys. If it's a piece in a small courtyard, are we still in the street? When I exhibited at Tour 13, I grappled with this question of the nature of the space. It was a disused building, and the tower was slated for demolition. I created an inside/outside installation, installing a kind of alarm clock with electrical wires that almost touched. At the entrance, I placed a small mosaic where the doorbell used to be, incorporating a toy train track, as the building belonged to La Sablière, the company that provides housing for SNCF (French National Railway) employees. I had also bought a small hourglass on Avenue d'Italie, which I had included. Whatever we do, it's important to grasp its meaning, because in the end, we are the ones who decide, not fashion or advertising.
REFLECTIONS ON MOSAIC
Your work also questions the mosaic as an entity in its own right.
Deconstructing an idea allows you to reconstruct something else using elements from the past. Deconstructing the notion of mosaic earned me some resistance, as there are always very orthodox people when you tackle a craft. But art is precisely one of the few fields where you can do whatever you want. Reflecting on the notion of mosaic allows me to imagine all the forms it could take: what matters is the module and the repetition, so a shirt could be one…
This idea of repetition is also found in the stencil.
The stencil has a connection to mosaics, which can be seen in my work on prints with the Sigillosaics. We have a module that we can repeat, and the effect created by the accumulation forms a mosaic. This offers possibilities for combinations, which we find in Warhol's series. In my stencils, I play with these superimpositions, these juxtapositions. A mosaic, in the strict sense of the term, is therefore unique, just like the stencil, because each element is unique.
Could you elaborate on how typography played a role as a reflective element in your work?
I was looking for typeset lead type, which wasn't easy because many had been melted down to recover the material, and it's difficult to find them at flea markets. Paella told me he knew a retired engraver who was selling his equipment, but that he would only give it to someone who could still use it. I convinced him by saying that my work could be used to print things, that the lead type wouldn't be wasted. I discovered a whole new world at this typesetter's, Jean Hofer, who finally gave me a demonstration. He separated each lead type with a cigarette paper so that all the letters could be distinguished within the word. Indeed, if they are too close together, their individual quality isn't visible, but if they are too far apart, the word is no longer legible. It was a veritable mosaic, and that's how I combined these techniques to create... Typosaics. This allowed me to work on the idea of an imprint and a seal, enabling the composition of a mosaic through repetition of the motif.
This archive project is independent — Offer a coffee