After finishing the Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Marseille, Anita Molinero composed during her punk years her first sculptures, which made encounter salvaged objects and materials.
« During my studies at the Beaux-Arts I painted but I was not very talented for sculpture nor for technique. I told myself therefore that the unknown of art certainly needed to pass by a confrontation to these subjects. It was a little very private  manifesto, composed of denials, stating the conditions, which we impose ourselves in order to arrive to make something that would be new enough and would become a creation one day. (...) Thus, I made mountains of little cardboard boxes that I varnished with wallpaper glue and then mounted on whatever was at hand, or trashbags that I  filled with plaster and that I worked on with a wood die. »
Further on, she decided to add to the forms the power of an irreversible gesture for  which she adopted plastic and a series of toxic materials that she cuts, burns, slashes, and sculpts.
«(...) Since 1995, I love working with polystyrene that makes me think of sustainable materials such as bronze because you cannot get rid of it. (...) I stop before the arrival of the formless and sometimes a work is finished before having even been started. A sculpture must stay a form and not to go into a formless state. »
Already in 1994 she took part of the exhibition Country sculpture at the Consortium of Dijon with Franck Stella, John Chamberlain, Robert Grosvenor, Carel Visser and Nancy Rubins.
The FRAC Limousin in 2002, the MAMCO in Geneva in 2006, the FRAC Alsace,
the FRAC Haute Normandie in 2009, the Consortium of Dijon in 2014 and recently the Museum Ettore Fico in Turin have dedicated solo shows to her work.
In 2012 she was selected to create the tramway station of porte de la Villette on the line 3b of Île-de-France. In April 2015, she received the residency award of the Salomon Foundation in New York.
Her works are in important public collections.

Anita Molinero
Born in 1953 in Floirac
Lives and works in Paris


SOLO SHOWS

2022
Anita Molinero, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris

2021
RECYCLAGE-SURCYCLAGE, Carte blanche, Espace Monte Cristo, Paris
Siment se la coule douce, Centre d’Art Bastille, Grenoble

2020
Impromtue, La gare / le quai 294m9, Saint-Maurice-lès-Chateauneuf, France

2019
L'Ilot Rouge, Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Suisse
Les Zipettes, 19 Crac, Montbéliard, France

2018
#7 clous à Marseille chez Patrick Raynaud, Marseille, France
Bouche-moi ce trou, fille de la nuit, Palais de Tokyo, Paris

2017
Des ongles noirs sous le vernis, Musée de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d'Olonne
La Grosse Bleue, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris

2016
Plus flamme que moi, Galerie Valérie Bach, Bruxelles

2015
FIAC, Hors les murs, Jardin des Tuileries, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris
Plastic Butcher, Signal, New York
Le Bayou, Galerie Thomas Bernard / Cortex Athletico, Paris
Anita Molinero, Museo Ettore Fico, Turin

2014
Oreo 2, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Oreo, Le Consortium, Dijon

2013
Tarmac, le 180, Rouen
FIAC, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Grand Palais, Paris
Hallali, Galerie Michel Journiac, Paris

2012
La fiancée du pirate, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Prequel, Cycle Eternel Détour, MAMCO, Genève
Centre d'Art Contemporain Passages, Troyes

2011
L'irremplaçable expérience de l'explosion de Smobby, La Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers

2009
Ultime caillou, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat
Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen

2007
Pépertinence, La Suite, Château-Thierry
Cocoerrance, la BF15, Lyon
Nucléo, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Chuuut, écouuute, la croûûûte, Le Carré, Chapelle du Genêteil, Château-Gontier

2006
Extrusoït, Cycle Mille et trois plateaux, MAMCO, Genève
L'ormeau blessé, Musée Zadkine, Les Arques

2005
Les Ateliers d'artistes de la Ville de Marseille

2004
FIAC, Galerie Dediby, Paris

2003
Le Grand Café, St-Nazaire
Le Parvis, Centre d'art contemporain, Tarbes

2002
FRAC Limousin, Limoges

2001
Le Spot, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Le Havre

2000
Galerie du Triangle, Bordeaux

1995
Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

1994
Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Dijon

1993
Chapelle des Lazaristes, Centre de Création Contemporaine, Tours

1988
Ecole municipale d'Arts Plastiques, Châtellerault

1985
Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers

1980
Galerie Med a Mothi, Montpellier

GROUP SHOWS
2019
Futur, Ancien, Fugitif, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Masterpieces 2, Galerie Thomas Bernard / Cortex Athletico, Paris
Masterpieces, Galerie Thomas Bernard / Cortex Athletico, Paris
Brûler, dirent-elles, Galerie Duchamp, Yvetot, France
Vole au vent, FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen
Gigantisme, Art et Industrie, Frac Grand Large, Dunkerque, France

2018
Sculpter (faire l'atelier), La Criée, Beaux-Arts, Rennes

2017
Voyage d'hiver, Château de Versailles, France
FIAC, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Grand Palais, Paris, France
Notes for a shell, avec Tiago de Abreu Pinto, ART-O-RAMA, Marseille, France
Echelle de familiarité, Chapelle Saint-Libéral, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France
Archinature, Piacé, Le Radieux - Bézard, Le Corbusier, Piacé, France
Agora, collectif 2a1, Galerie R-2, Paris, France


2016
Plus flamme que moi, Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels

2015
FIAC, Hors les murs, Jardin des Tuileries, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris
Plastic Butcher, Signal, New York
Le Bayou, Galerie Thomas Bernard / Cortex Athletico, Paris
Anita Molinero, Museo Ettore Fico, Turin

2014
Oreo 2, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Oreo, Le Consortium, Dijon

2013
Tarmac, le 180, Rouen
FIAC, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Grand Palais, Paris
Hallali, Galerie Michel Journiac, Paris

2012
La fiancée du pirate, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Prequel, Cycle Eternel Détour, MAMCO, Geneva
Centre d'Art Contemporain Passages, Troyes

2011
L'irremplaçable expérience de l'explosion de Smobby, La Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers

2009
Ultime caillou, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat
Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen

2007
Pépertinence, La Suite, Château-Thierry
Cocoerrance, la BF15, Lyon
Nucléo, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Chuuut, écouuute, la croûûûte, Le Carré, Chapelle du Genêteil, Château-Gontier

2006
Extrusoït, Cycle Mille et trois plateaux, MAMCO, Geneva
L'ormeau blessé, Musée Zadkine, Les Arques

2005
Les Ateliers d'artistes de la Ville de Marseille

2004
FIAC, Galerie Dediby, Paris

2003
Le Grand Café, St-Nazaire
Le Parvis, Centre d'art contemporain, Tarbes

2002
FRAC Limousin, Limoges

2001
Le Spot, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Le Havre

2000
Galerie du Triangle, Bordeaux

1995
Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

1994
Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Dijon

1993
Chapelle des Lazaristes, Centre de Création Contemporaine, Tours

1988
Ecole municipale d'Arts Plastiques, Châtellerault

1985
Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers

1980
Galerie Med a Mothi, Montpellier


GROUP SHOWS

2019
Vole au vent, FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen

2018
Sculpter (face à l'atelier), La Criée, Beaux-Arts, FRAC Bretagne, Rennes
Discorde, fille de la nuit, Palais de Tokyo, Paris

2017
FIAC, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Grand Palais, Paris, France
Notes for a shell, with Tiago de Abreu Pinto, ART-O-RAMA, Marseille, France
Echelle de familiarité, Chapelle Saint-Libéral, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France
Archinature, Piacé, Le Radieux - Bézard, Le Corbusier, Piacé, France
Agora, collectif 2a1, Galerie R-2, Paris, France

2016
Run, Run, Run, Villa Arson, Nice
Dopo i frutti, Entrepôts Armand Fabre, Marseille
The Past is the Past, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris
Non figuratif : un regain d'intérêt ?, Abbaye Saint André, Centre d'art contemporain, Meymac
Your memories are our future, Palais de Tokyo, Zurich
Not really really, Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels

2015
Anatomie de l'automate, La Panacée, Montpellier
Résistance des Matériaux, LE-SHED, Notre-Dame-de-Bondeville
Genre Humain, Palais Jacques-Coeur, Bourges
Sèvres Outdoors, Cité de la céramique, Sèvres
FOMO, Sextant et plus, La Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille
Dérive(s), curated by Romain Dauriac, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York

2014
Summer time, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
6 weeks-ends d'art contemporain, Le mètre carré, Nancy
Vitrines sur l'art, a proposition by Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, vitrines des Galeries Lafayette, Paris
Entrée en matière, Chambon Sur Voueize
L'heure des sorcières, curator : Anna Colin, Centre d'Art Contemporain le Quartier, Quimper

2013
De leur temps (4) - Regards croisés de 100 collectionneurs sur la création, Centre d'Art le Hangar à Bananes, Nantes
Je préfère être dérangé, Ecole du Magasin et ESAD, Grenoble
Collage ou l'âge de la colle, Galerie Eva Meyer, Paris
Mon île de Montmajour, curator : Christian Lacroix, Abbaye de Montmajour, Arles
Agir dans ce paysage, Centre International d'Art et du Paysage, Ile de Vassivière, Beaumont du Lac
Pièces d'été, Malbuisson
Open sky Museum - Musée à ciel ouvert, a project of Eden Morfaux, Plaine de Tougas, Saint-Herblain
In situ 2013 - Patrimoine et Art Contemporain, Eglise Saint-Etienne d'Issensac, Brissac
L'arbre de vie, curators : Gaël Charbau and Alain Berland, Collège des Bernardins, Paris
Retour du monde - commandes publiques autour du tramway de Paris, MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland
Fondre, battre, briser, Pavillon Blanc, Centre d'art contemporain, Colomiers
Les artistes et le tramway de Paris, Hôtel de Ville, Paris

2012
Pommery : 10 ans d'expériences, curator : Bernard Blistène, Domaine Pommery, Reims
Group Show, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
L'Amour du risque / Ljubav prema riziku, Collections des Fonds Régionaux d'Art Contemporain, Musée d'Art Contemporain / MSU Zagreb, Zagreb
Parcours de mémoire, FRAC Franche Comté/ La Fraternelle, Saint Claude
Immanence accueille AnyWhere Gallery, Galerie Imanence, Paris
A suivre..., oeuvres du Fonds Municipal d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Gennevilliers, Ecole Municipale des Beaux-arts, Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers

2011
Pearls of the North, Palais d'Iéna, Paris
Hic sunt Leones, Terra incognita, oeuvres du FRAC Franche-Comté, Musée des Beaux-arts, Belfort
Identité et Genre, curator : Camille Pontaillet, Centre d'Art Contemporain Passages, Troyes and Slick, Paris
Sculpture'Elles - les sculpteurs femmes du XVIIème siècle à nos jours, Musée des années 30, Boulogne Billancourt
Formules, with Juliana Borinski, Institut de Sciences de Matériaux, exhibition organized by Kunsthalle Mulhouse Centre d'Art Contemporain La Fonderie, Mulhouse, France
Paillettes, prothèses, poubelles, curator : Ramon Tio Bellido, exhibition with Nina Childress et Emmanuelle Villard, Fondacion Bancaja, Castellon

2010
Parking de sculptures, Centre d'Art Contemporain Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers
Rendez-vous à Shanghai, Biennale de Shanghai, Espace de l'Institut des Peintres et Sculpteurs de Shanghai, Shanghai
FIAC, Cour Carrée du Louvre, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Aires de jeux, contre-emplacements, Micro Onde CAC de l'Onde, Vélizy-Villacoublay
La Quinzaine Radieuse, Piacé le Radieux, Bézard Le Corbusier 777 (4), Château de Kerpaul
Extension du domaine de la réalité, Ecole des Beaux-arts, Rennes
Chassé croisé, FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier
Buy-Sellf : retour vers le futur, CAPC, Entrepôt Lainé, Bordeaux

2009
FIAC, Cour Carrée du Louvre, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
A nous deux, exhibition organized by FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen and Abbaye-aux-Dames
Mes Dalton, Centre d'Art Contemporain La Chapelle du Genêteil, Château-Gontier
Rendez-vous manqué, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Volta5, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Basel
Les plus grands artistes du XXème arrondissement de Paris, Galerie Sémiose, Paris
La Force de l'Art 02, Grand Palais, Paris

2008
Anita Molinero / Cady Noland / Steven Parrino / Kelley Walker, Centre d'Art Contemporain Le Spot, Le Havre
FIAC, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Curiosität, curator : François Curlet, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp
La dégelée Rabelais, FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Site du Pont du Gard
Downtown le Havre, Biennale d'art contemporain 'Arts le Havre 08', Le Havre
Art Brussels, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Brussels
Propositions lumineuses 2, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris

2007
Capricci (possibilités d'autres mondes), Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg
XS, Espace Mica, Rennes, curator Elisabeth Wetterwald
FIAC, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris
Quartier général, Digne-les-Bains
Made in Dole, Musée des Beaux-arts de Dole
La maison populaire, Montreuil
Modern©ité, Stroom, The Hague
Chauffe Marcel, FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon

2005
Know what they mean?, Chez Valentin, Paris
FIAC, Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris

2004
El arte como va el arte como viene, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid
Les pièges de l'amour, FRAC Limousin, Limoges
Bienvenue à Entropia, Centre National d'Art et du Paysage, Vassivière-en-Limousin

2002
Love trap's, Centre d'art, Sigean

2000
Une suite décorative : 3ème mouvement, FRAC Limousin, Limoges
Une suite décorative : 2ème mouvement, FRAC Limousin, Limoges

1999
Les états de la sculpture, Le 19, centre Régional d'Art Contemporain, Montbéliard

1998
Appartement privé, Bordeaux

1996
Triple Axel, Le Gymnase, Roubaix
L'art du plastique, Ensb-a, Paris

1994
Country Sculptures, le Consortium, Dijon

1992
Fair of Bolzano

1981
Alkema, Pontoreau, Ponchelet, Molinero, CAPC, Musée d'art Contemporain, Bordeaux

1978
Université du Mirail, Toulouse


PROJECTS IN THE PUBLIC SPACE
2011
Creation with UrbanAct (Alexandre Bouton) of the station of tramway line 3 of Porte de la Villette, Paris


AWARDS
2015
Salomon Foundation Residency Award


TEACHING
1999-2014
Professor at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Marseille

1994
Artist senior lecturer, University of Bogota, Colombia

1993
Residency at École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Dijon

1993-92
Guest professor, senior lecturer, Ensba, Paris


GRANT
1990
Grant of Fiacre, one-year stay in Sevilla, Spain


BIBLIOGRAPHY
2018
Sculpter (faire l'atelier), La Criée, Beaux-Arts, Rennes

2005
Anita Molinero, Yves Michaud : "Anita Molinero"
Brice Matthieussent : "Sans titre. À propos de la sculpture d'Anita Molinero"
Xavier Douroux : "Sans désignation fixe ou la délocalisation de la sculpture formelle"
Anita Molinero : "Comment le nom commun « sculpture » devient un nom plus sale que propre. En réponse à un extrait du texte de Xavier Douroux"
Sophie Legrandjacques : "Entretien avec Anita Molinero", coeditions : FRAC Limousin (Limoges) ; le Grand Café, centre d'art contemporain de Saint-Nazaire ; Le Spot, centre d'art contemporain Le Havre et le Parvis, centre d'art contemporain Ibos.
Anita Molinero, Philippe Eon : "Flux tendu ou options de stock", in catalogue Les Ateliers d'artistes de la ville de Marseille, 2005

1998
Les Marges de la vision, textes critiques 1971 -1995, Yves Michaud : "Anita Molinero", Editions Jacqueline Chambon, Nimes, 1998, p.203

1995
Catalogue de l'Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Anita Molinero, Ramon Tio Bellido : "eau de javel", 1995
Collection XXè : 1983-1995. Douze ans d'acquisitions d'art contemporain en Poitou-Charentes, Blandine Chavanne : "Anita Molinero", Angoulème : FRAC Poitou-Charentes, 1995, p.145

1994
Catalogue de l'Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Anita Molinero : "sculptures", Xavier Douroux et Franck Gautherot : "Sans désignation fixe", Dijon, 1994


COLLECTIONS
Fonds Cantonal d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
Fonds Municipal d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Gennevilliers
Fonds Municipal d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
FRAC Alsace
FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon
Fonds National d'Art Contemporain
FRAC Basse-Normandie
Frac Bretagne
FRAC Limousin
FRAC Franche-Comté
FRAC Poitou-Charentes
Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers
La Piscine, Musée d'Art et d'Industrie, Roubaix
Le Consortium, Dijon
MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland

ANITA MOLINERO : A PRIVATE MANIFEST
INTERVIEW BY ALAIN BERLAND AND VALERIE DA COSTA PUBLISHED IN
PARTICULES N°22, DECEMBER 2008/JANUARY 2009

Avoiding virtuosity, ease or even commentary, this is the very unlikely programme that Anita Molinero's work has set itself from the beginning. A project that she has been stubbornly carrying for thirty years to build a body of work that has no equal on  the French artistic scene.

\"During my studies at Fine Arts School, I painted but I wasn't very good at sculpture and technique. I said to myself that the unknown in art should probably confront itself with them. It's a small private manifest, made of negations, based on conditions that one gives oneself to be able to do something that is new enough and can one day become a creation. I couldn't see any other way at the beginning of the eighties, in a period where we were invaded by conceptual art like "three pencil writings on a  wall". A form of art that presented itself as impersonal, but that paradoxically I found very narcissistic. I wanted to do the opposite of the conceptual artists: use tools without knowing what they were used for, whilst using them with precision. I then  made mountains of small cardboard boxes that I varnished with wallpaper paste and that I then assembled on anything, or rubbish bags that I filled with plaster and that I modelled with a wood gouge. At that time, I remember that artistic conditions  were post-modern, based on the defeat of idols. I didn't believe in form, or its opposite, that is to say the culture of the message. I quickly found a relay in the person of Yves Michaud who showed me David Hammons' work. But the latter had a culture of minority that I didn't, except if the sum of normal conventions makes up a minority in art, that is to say that I am a mother, I am a teacher, I live outside of Paris... A situation that makes me a minority in the art world.

AVOIDING COMMENTARY

It's by elimination that I ended up calling what I do "sculpture". There was no other choice. I didn't want to call it "art" or "installation". I find Boris Groys's sentence in his book The communist Post-scriptum great, when he says that art that looks like art cannot be art. For me, the art of commentary in which we are in now bothers me. Many artists just interpret and revisit with small nuances. It's art that looks like art, and because it has already been art, it distances itself from it. So, what part of what I do is non art? For the rubbish bins for example, people tell me they look too much like rubbish bins. No. They are rubbish bins, they can only look like what they are; that is my guarantee. I am keen that they be recognised, it is significant of something that is the rubbish bin and not art. I protected myself from the art of commentary or project by using very few ideas. I do not have a project for my exhibitions. I know what I want to work with, but not what the sculptures are going to look like. I improvise by making the sculptures on site. I discover sixty percent of the work while doing it. It's always a risk, but I don't want to do it any other way. The most difficult is to stop the gesture before the piece becomes a puddle, lava or its own commentary. It must remain identifiable. I stop before the inform takes over and sometimes the piece is finished before having been started. Sculpture must remain form and not go into the inform. I have tested everything. I have made small earth mounds with cardboard boxes, but I realised that I was going too much into the inform, into the deference of the gesture, of a "beautiful gesture". I therefore stopped because I found it too curious and precious. I would like to redo small sculptures, what I called slightly venomous chimney sculptures. I made them for twenty years, but I am worried I will not be able to find their charm again. I would like them to have the strength of my larger sculptures, but it's difficult because I work to scale, without reducing or enlarging. However, "the small" moves us. It's often a "comfort" sculpture to scale. "The small" is often quickly "nothing" and I am wary of this magnified "nothing". I have worked for the last four years with two assistants, but I don't delegate. They are there and I am too. I circle the piece and give instructions that they often anticipate because we understand each other well. I work without drawing, after all these years, the stock of images is in my head and the instructions come via language. It is a very visual and sexual language. I tell them: "So, do cocks." It's very coded, it's a studio language, a language of the action to carry out (not that of an exhibition). In sculpture, we have always talked about knockout. I preserve my sculpture by sometimes using failure. When I find that a sculpture doesn't work, I throw it away, but at the same time, this gesture scares me slightly.

FORCING ONESELF

I destroyed fifteen years of creation, that was maybe an advantage, but difficult to live with. The last sculpture most likely carries all the others. I lacked "professionalism" by rarely or badly archiving my work. For several years now, someone else does it in my place. I have accepted the process. Sometimes, I feel that what I thought was a failure or a success is only a dream, a fantastical projection. If one says that my art is masculine, it's simply because it isn't feminine. When the artistic scene opened itself to women, it started down the road of intimate and feminine representations, with the complicity of men. This aspect doesn't interest me. My art isn't masculine as is for example Dewar & Gicquel's, it doesn't use masculine attributes, activities like boxing, drumming, fishing. But, if you want, you can say that my sculpture is potent. Its confrontation with matter is direct and violent. My great model is Rodin, I find the orbits of Balzac's eyes extraordinary, it's the first great modern sculpture. It's true that there are few women sculptors who confront themselves so violently with the matter. Sometimes I want to mention other artists I admire like Bernard Requichot; I hold him within me, but I don't refer to him. It's not the same to hold an artist within, to comment him or to quote him. To comment implies a distance that I do not want to have, and I see it in others, it bores me greatly. It's precisely art that looks like art. I try to do art that steers clear from this "in between" whilst refusing to do something that seduces the public, that becomes a "lawsuit against the world". It isn't easy, but it leaves a lot of room for the object. I can't stand the hundredth slightly dented minimalist painting. It's pleasure or erudition. What possible choice is there apart from that ? Political action that positions the spectator, but that doesn't interest me either. I am convinced that art must contain politics, but not use them. I have concerns that are not necessarily "opinions" on my time. I often name my pieces a posteriori, and when I qualify them of "post-Tchernobyl", it's retroactively. Now, I give titles to my sculptures, but titles have often been the object of reflection as to title artworks by a concept, is to take away a lot of their energetic quality. It's like drawing a box around them, preceding them. It's also too present. I have therefore shrugged this off. And one sculpture gives rise to another. I said to myself that a title must have the strength of a name. In the end, I gradually called them by the equivalent of a name, that doesn't have meaning unless it is worn. In fact, they have titles that I often forget. For construction cones, I take the name of the company that I am transforming and making better. It can also start with typing errors, pronunciation mistakes. They are Christian names, but it took me a long time to find them. The rubbish bins are the only ones not to have titles because I like saying "rubbish bins". "Look, we're getting out the old rubbish bins. »

WORKING WITH ORDINARY MATERIALS

I don't create series. I would say that there are genres that I go back to. Since 1995, I love working with polystyrene that reminds me of perennial materials like bronze because you cannot get rid of it. In the nineties, it wasn't well looked upon to work with this kind of material because art that circulated and sold was maybe, paradoxically, an art of the ephemeral that had the qualities of instability, but with a symbolic added value. However, when you love a piece by Filliou made up of a broom and a bucket, it's as unstable and melancholy as polystyrene with bike chains. The visual void is maybe more difficult to grasp. You therefore have to build a myth around it. In an exhibition in Tours, a collector insulted me when seeing my work. That day, I understood why I made sculpture. You can put anything on a canvas, people are hardly ever shocked because the frame is fixed, but this poor object (it was two construction cones) that I presented, and that didn't have any violent meaning in itself, couldn't be looked at because it was violent in itself. Painting is always possible, whereas sculpture is often placed on the side of the impossible, of difficulty, probably because it is on the side of reality. For me, the presence of the contemporary is located in sculpture and I have always sought to intervene on the matter. The ready-made remains for me a moment of genius and like any moment of genius, it is unnecessary to reproduce it. All the artists who redo it today, for me it's a joke. I call it "art of creational leisure". When you go to look at Duchamp's ready-mades, you really need to be a fetishist otherwise you don't look at them. You go on a pilgrimage to see a relic. And then, you realise the importance of the montage (the museum's) like when you go to look at a relic with everything that involves. The rereading of Duchamp's ready-made doesn't even have the poverty, the daring of a relic. Duchamp was very just in his choices. He didn't go wrong. I learnt with Duchamp, but I understood with Degas (the danser), who dresses an excremental bronze in a tulle skirt. It's when watching science fiction films like Terminator that I saw the type of sculpture that I was doing. The Venilia wall comes from there; it's the transition from liquid to solid. It's homemade morphing! By making rubbish bins, I was thinking of Aliens. Science fiction is in a rubbish bin for me, it's organic science fiction, not technological. I think I create an artwork that repeats itself. Rubbish bins, for example, I will be making all my life. It's a bit like Rodin that used the same gestures on different subjects all his life. Repetition isn't the same as creating a system. I could never create environments like Jessica Stockholder, who is an artist of conquest. I am an artist of furrows, I dig deeper into what I do. I like excessiveness and I don't like installed things that give a petty bourgeois aspect. I want to work with ordinary materials, that can always be found next-door. I recently made sculptures with a childbirth table, Zimmer frames and wheelchairs. They are objects that leave us on the spot. They stagger us and force us to fix ourselves. They oppose themselves to fluidity, rapidity. In relationship with the sculpture's unity, their ergonomic measures are correct. And old age is probably the next obscene and creative age. Psychoanalysis, like art, makes diagnosis and behaviour appear and disappear. When I talk about hysteria in my work, it is through encounters, intellectual coincidences. I thought about what was the most appropriate figure when talking about the art that I did, and hysteria fascinated me because we say that it is a state that develops outside of oneself. It is no longer brought up today, but its old representations show fixed bodies looking like stone. That is why I like making this analogy. I fix energy, it has to come out of oneself, it has to be exhilarating.

REFERENCE POINTS?

My references are located in a cemetery with the missing persons, ghosts and a supermarket. Living, death and spirits. The common trait between these spaces is the organisation in aisles for the cemetery and for the supermarket. Amongst the missing persons that let me rest in peace: a Fontana sculpture, a Degas dancer with a tutu for example. In the ghost series that haunt Morris' crayons, a ball knitted by R Truckel, a beautiful pussy by Séchas, Mondrian's painting with a "Delft" blue background and coloured adhesive. The meeting of poverty and exhilaration in Oïticica's work. Manzoni was also for me a fascinating and dynamic figure whose insolent avantgarde aspect I envied for a long time, that I would have liked to own like you covet a natural yet unjustly inaccessible quality. I realised not very long ago that it was "cotton, the Velpeau bandage effect", the naughty and childish Catholic playing with nursery materials that interested me in Manzoni. He is now part of the missing persons. Ghosts are artworks with vague outlines and with parts detached from everything, it can go from this slightly rugged and matted white matter of Sechas' radiant pussy to a bright curtain by F Gonzalez Torres. In the Supermarket series, I help myself, I consume without concern for traceability; films. Bernadette Lafond and her cabin, a whore in love with a goat in the pirate's fiancée, the ideal collector for one of my sculpture series. Terminator 2, an encounter between a film sequence and a Venilia wall. Alien 3, because I sometimes feel that at the bottom of my melted rubbish bins, two glimmers are looking at me and trying to soften me with their wet glares. A bit of ketchup, a bit of mayonnaise and chocolate, one day or another I will make a sculpture with these 3 colours thinking of Mac Carty and a crochet cover by M Kelley of knotted sheets like Cattelan that I could use to attach a sculpture... But it in the end, is there an invariant element that has spun through the years and the forms? I was asking myself this question, looking over a text I had written, so I looked for notes, I looked at invitation cards. I thought about this stubborn refusal to give titles, going so far as deleting the "untitled" that is conventional in this case. I realised that the word sculpture was always present and tirelessly repeated without any concern for elegance (never a synonym for avoiding heaviness) or any sense of humour or play. I started observing, as one looks with attention at an object from all its angles, trying to discover its function. I first discovered it handwritten and in my writing: a simple S separated from the word, is still the S of "sorcière" (the French for "witch"), a synthetic representation of a (whistling) snake, then comes the word "CULPTURE" divided (by isolating CUL) by the mute "P" of Papa or Penis. And what if this choice of sculpture, often tiresome to do, found its reference and its completion in its name, written preferably by me?