#I have been told several times that my preparatory drawings are interesting. But they are small and I don't want to part with them: they ar

[mart-singer]

I have been told several times that my preparatory drawings are interesting. But they are small and I don't want to part with them: they are part of my archives. I always wanted to redo them larger but how can I convey the messy and dirty spirit of the drawing without making a hyperrealistic and soulless copy. Here is an attempt with the help of monotype and colored pencils. Since for monotype, you have to draw upside down so that it prints right side up, I didn't always understand the numbers I was printing. It produces weird things, sometimes incomprehensible but it keeps the spirit of the original. Monotype and colors pencils on paper, 16,1 x 11,7 inches / 24 x 29,7 cm

[lemomentfatal]

October 31, 2022, 1:03 pm

This is the last day I can call. Tomorrow I am going back to Paris, back to the exhibition space, to see the performances programmed on the last day of the show. Two days ago, I fell on my bike, nothing serious, just kind of stupid, and the screen of my phone broke, the device no longer accepts my headphones, the transmitted sound is not distinct. There are parts of what this young person tells me that I cannot make out. It is the first time she has come to the Salon de Montrouge, she is here on her own, it is the beginning of the holidays. She thinks it is a great idea to call the visitors. She is a student in a preparatory art school near Paris. Her teachers told her go and visit the exhibition; she was very keen to come.

She is standing in front of a house, she thinks it is made of lead, it is a piece by the artist Corentin Darré. She finds it funny to encounter this material here, because last year she did some work on church windows, she thought a lot about this material which she did not like at all, because of its toxicity.

She does not identify herself as an artist, but this year she is being asked to create things. It is a beginning, on a small scale, it is not very concrete yet.

It scares her that as an artist you are not supposed to be there with the audience of your work. There is something about the things having to be finished, that disturbs her. Her interest in art began with theatre. This February, she went with some friends to see a play, which really touched her. She has been thinking a lot about stage design since then.

Our conversation does not quite flow. I ask her several times to repeat words that I cannot make out, there are silences while I take notes, she waits for me. She speaks slowly, but the phone obscures her speech. I explain that I have a problem with the sound, that my phone is broken.

It is a quiet hour in the exhibition. She is now next to a lot of small, white bunk beds that multiply in space because of a mirror, it is a piece by the artist Camille Sart, she thinks it is great.

She goes towards the drawings. She asks me if they are the ones with people with funnels in their heads. She reads the text on the title card, she likes Roland Topor too, the first thing she saw of him, but without knowing it, was the film La Planète Sauvage, with the blue people.

I feel like I have not asked people the right questions. What did I really want to hear from them? What did I want to give them? I want these calls to have a certain importance; I was looking for a certain sense of intensity that I often feel is missing in exhibitions. Today, I have the feeling that I am not really achieving it. The words are mumbled, as if I were under a duvet. It is the last day, it is the end of this framework of writing, this way of narrating that I have imposed on my life since the first day of the exhibition.

She asks me if I have talked a lot with the other artists. I say that I do not think I have talked enough with them, that the days of installing the exhibition and the opening were a bit feverish, that maybe I should start calling the other artists. She laughs. She asks me if I am happy with our exchange. I say that I am very happy to have spoken with her. I wish her a good day, good luck, and so does she.