through that, you discover many things. It’s a kind of conceptual art in which you establish rules, and then follow those through to the very end. You can get a visual complexity from that, but what I really like is how you can dig into the rules or the conceptual statement, which for me is necessary. Ronan bases everything in his artworks on the voice of his hand and is very into a handmade practice, but that’s very different to me. I’m always tweaking the software so that it’s unstable. I like art with a conceptual background; I’m a little bit more lost with art that has a more romantic background. Johanna Is it very intentional for you that these series of works all look so different? The Wanderer is very different to The Impossible, which combines photography with block colours. Erwan I guess it is intentional. In general, I find quite a lot of limits inside product design – with product design it’s very difficult not to be elegant. But with these works I’m looking for something a bit more dirty or muddy. I’m looking for something impolite that can blur things, because contrast is something that I find interesting. I want these works to not be precious by their nature. Johanna That seems reflected in the way you print these pieces. It’s quite casual: they’re kind of scrunched up, or else are printed on fabrics. Is that also part of your desire to re-evaluate the outcomes of these processes? Erwan One of the problems with contemporary art is that people can’t really handle it. There are so many contrasts between the price of the thing and its physicality. I’m just trying to do things that have a kind of easiness inside the roughness. Right now, I’m thinking that I should print some very big canvases with the people who print graphics on trucks, for example. I don’t give a shit about printing quality or colour quality, or at least not in the usual way. Johanna You don’t want control of it? Erwan Some printers have asked me if they’ve printed these works in the right colour. But there is no right colour because I’ve been doing them on multiple screens, all of which display colour differently. I’m happy not having 100 per cent control of the process. Roughness gives a certain conceptual easiness. There’s an artist I have always admired called Claude Viallat. He used to paint on canvases, but those would be dented or whatever – they weren’t pristine – and I always loved Frank Stella because he also moved
out of typical canvases. You then have people like Robert Smithson, who literally poured glue out onto the landscape [Glue Pour, 1969, ed.]. That was always very attractive to me in terms of its impoliteness towards nature. I would be happy to bring students here and tell them to do literally anything with whatever they can find here. Johanna And is that because you feel that that freedom is ultimately lacking in design education and our everyday lives? Erwan I feel very concerned with the growing complexity of progress. So many things look literally impossible to practice now. But you can just practise without too much thinking; you can practise by just being on site and making. Face the reality that is in front of you. As I get ready to leave and catch the TGV back to Paris, the skies suddenly open. The oppressive heat of the last 24 hours evaporates and it feels easier to breathe again. It’s like a lid has been lifted. Bouroullec’s daughters run into the rain, jumping around, laughing, faces to the sky. Looking at them, he says, “Sensation. That’s what I’m talking about.” E N D
146
