How many people have seen the same (one) image ?
How suggestive is an image that can go around the world in a few seconds and has been broadcast by every press organ?
One striking example is the enormous cover of 9/11 around the world .It is not overdone to say that everyone has seen at least one image related to that event, that a collective imagination has been created ,giving thousands of people the same landmarks and memories .This gives us a glimpse of the power of the media and of the unconscious import of the image our eyes absorb.
What room is left for doubt, for a critical spirit ? Are we able and willing to escape their hold ?


My perception of reality could be described as the abstract absolute(...) that keeps changing shape...


Five years ago I settled in the abandonned Renault factory.This place I took (occupied) with other people, artists ,militants,in order to transform the initial environment( a shed for industrial storage) into creation workshops and a living laboratory for artistic, poetic and political research (NTA) ,a 34,000 meters square dissident space within a society won by triumphant liberalism,a crossroads for creators, their medium and the exploration of the many sides of art .The idea was to make it a free and autogere space for possibles.

-multiple environments connecting
-complex possible results
-multitudes of ARBORESCENCES

I always payed great attention in my own personal process to all kinds of graphic signs :drawings, graffitti, PICTO,paintings,tags;IDEOGRAMMES
...At the crossroads of image and writing ,they are amongst the most active and imaginative forms of communication,always in search of renewed meaning and sense .Everyday, people explore these visual forms ,connecting them to their own life story ,energies and knowledge.
As for myself, confronted to an excess of images , in a society of the Image , weary of absorbing graphic signals inducing me to change my way of life for that of the advertisements, I felt like stopping on various images that have touched me more than others. (fights,opposition,conflict,war,rivalry,discord,antagonism,duel,battle...).
My research about the meaning and sense induced by the signs has found its matter in the flow of images poured out daily by the mass media : newspaper,tv ,web...

information-suggestion-propaganda

The object of my process is to use ,understand and change the image ; to re-use it , make it mine ,take it out of its context,change its basic aim and turn it into an object of subversion,a prejudice taking the shape of pictural dissidence (counter propaganda), an attempt to create and nourish the counter-movement libertarian propaganda) to question the continuous flow of images (liberal propaganda) that establish common landmarks for a thousand million people around the world .
For the mass media confess all they ever wanted was to « sell available brain-time to the advertisers »,to make the people more servile to the the products overproduced by this society of mass production.Advertisers would'nt want people to start questionning the soundness of their lifestyle,would they ?

In quite the same way as the word , the image conveys sense and meaning . There is a root to a word ,that helps us decifer its origin and first meaning.An image has no such definitive SEMIOLOGIE ,for it is the result of life's perpetual movement .A physical ,inward and outward movement gives its strength to the image, to the sketch you catch ,to the picture suggesting life in movement (photography,poster,filmed image,digital image,painting..) .There is also the semantic side of it , the totemic chronology of the image ,of its history,of its own meaning.
I have great interest and curiosity for oriental IDEOGR.,the way image and writing merge in calligraphy,pushing the image towards the idea,creating shapes to adapt the local language and IDEOGR complex and pure .

Image and representation of the image

I often wonder about the image in the public space ,whether it belongs to me or not,since it is meant for me as much as for others.I am not given a choice to see or not see that kind of informative advertising-image, I have to see it, I undergo its presence , it is enforced on me ,I cannot not see it , it gets into my subconscious ,and nestles in it.The mass media have understood that hammering a particular sequence of images can change history ,the image makes you buy,the image makes you dream,it sells utopia within reach.

The material for that series of « hijacked images for use in counter-propaganda » I fished for in the mass media: snapshots, web images , daily newspapers, mostly topical events from march 2004 to march 2005.I made a hundred screen savings, picked up dozens of images on the web and explored the free and national newspapers.Out of this prolific mass of information I chose the images that most appealed to me for their conflictual carachter. Fighting is a constant theme in the media.
Dispute and fighting are considered barbarian in the west and wherever the liberal society has settled.There is no room for violence in a society of rights in which conflicts are solvedfrom court to court and wars are considered (nothing but) the « dark hours of history » .Despite this roundabout of good manners and double sided politeness I believe I am at the heart of the most violent society man can live in. This is the core of my work.Violence is part of our daily life,however hard you try to deny,make up or mask them ,conflict and violence are within us at every second ,and even though I'm not directly part of it I contribute to it as a voyeur.

I started by an immersion in the media,out of curiosity and voyeurism, I stuffed myself with topical issues and images ,then I drew the great lines ,started some snapshots on tv shows,on everything related to the whole (thing).Tv covers up an infinite field in the representation of all that is physical and real and gives access to timeless interpretations by fantasy and the uncredibly unreal.

Methodology
Image capture transformation
Transparency-projection
Petroleum and fill-in
Message,writing,slogan
Installation

After selecting a panel of images I started transforming them with a retouch software
to deprive the image of its context and the message of its primary discursive value, pervert the meaning, and make the image only a model for a new reflection ,still based on the modified originals.The possibilities offered by the softwares in image treatment are quite impressive,so I chose to hold on to a basic script so as not to dissipate and end up merely with computer presentation help work
My models I printed on transparent sheets to be projected on various surfaces (canvasses stretched or slack, bare walls...).

With a marker I transpose my image on a certain format, the result is quite random ,because my canvass-formats are different,unlike my transparencies that are all A4. A deformation takes places,between the initial pattern and the original centering.

This whole series wants to be an evocation of the surplus of this society ,of the overproducing of manufactured consumer goods and cultural consumer goods .Thus I chose not to buy anything , I helped myself around, salvaged and called for donation .
I sought inspiration in the italian artists of arte povera who work with little and tell a lot.That's how I came across huge cans of fuel(liquid tar ).Oil has been known since antiquity for its unique watertightness.It is said the sarkophages of the mummies of ancient Egypt as well as Noah's Arch in the mythological story of the Bible were coated with a black liquid treacle for protection.It is pure petroleum and strangely enough it is that very product that allows today's overproduction of consumer goods.And it is also the cause of the conflict that will establish the rise or fall of the liberal society.
Once my subjects were drawn on the canvass ,I questionned myself on FIGURATION and the relevance these themes .
« Leaving the watcher to himselflooking at a semi figurative /semi realistic image » does not produce the reaction I wish to offer. I am in a process of making propaganda ,and I want to re-use and imitate the advertising leaflet .
I choose to hammer my subject,I will not let the watcher's imagination wander ,so I introduced the text in graphical ballons ,as in comics or mangas.My painting becomes a graphic plate,mixing introspective drawing, writings and pictographic objects.I meddle in the work initiated by Wahrol and the pop art , and in the research work of the advertisers , who try to catch the eye of the audience introducing in its head an idea-concept,so as to induce a change in behaviour through the subconscious image .I believe the advertisers produce great work when it comes to capturing attention and getting into someone's head with a concept.
The work of south corea artist Wang Duhe treats « those everyone has seen ».
The poetical dimension in Djamel Tatah's work reminds me the extraordinary subjectivity painting can convey.
I was touched by Jenny Holzer's work her sober figurative work and the relevance of her conceptual research.It gave me inspiration to use minimalistic slogans ,thus I named one of my canvasses try not to cry.
The image evokes the reading of the charges against a western war prisoner ( or hostage ?) held by an islamist faction in Irak , just before having his throat cut by one of the menbers of the group.On the web you can see the terror of the orange-clothed prisoner ( in memory of guantanamo) and his tragical end . Besides the uneasiness provoked by the image, what I want here and with this image; is to make visible the hatred generated by the behaviour of the whole ruling class of the G8 countries in the 3d world, and show my solidarity with the people of the south.

After drawing and writing my big formats , I went through a more random step ,involving a painting I wanted to be quite instinctive . ,unlike the first steps called »scripts ».The scripts have their method ( graphics, petroleum and industrial meatl painting),while the painting part involves using everything I came across :oil or acrylic paint, pastels ... A layer of acrylic varnish gives the whole installation a glossy unity .

The aim of that sequence painting is to evoque an A4 page (portrait or landscape-wise )as there exists one everywhere something is for sale .I based myself on these leaflets that invade our letter boxes to give us cosumerist choices .By imitating the advertising process, I take on the role of
those who relentlessly try to change the audience's behaviour,I bring them to a confrontation with the image from the mass media and a familiar graphic treatment,at the same time introducing absurd ,not to say subversive messages.

The installation I want to realise would be 6m high by 5m ,in order to make commonplace and grandiloquent the hijacked images .Create a facade unity ,an impression of trop plein (the endlessly repeated image ) and use sentences that induce the contrary of what is shown.

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