“And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.”
Albert Camus’ speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, 1957 NRF Gallimard
Olivier DE SCHRYNMAKERS, visual artist I work in France and live in Paris. Most of my work is visible on Instagram ARTCONTRECULTURE.
I was lucky enough to have different workshops, each more extraordinary than the other: first of all in the private mansion of the mistress of King Louis XIV rue du Temple, currently the Marian Goodman gallery; a few years later, at Les Métallos, another historic site, the former Couesnon wind musical instrument factory. This 2000 m2 building was purchased in 1936 to be the headquarters of the CGT metallurgical workers union. I established my studio there with the graphic designer Claude Baillargeon. This workshop, formerly the auditorium, later became a childbirth preparation room. Room historically linked to the Bluets maternity ward, reputed to be the first in France to practice painless childbirth.
Also in artist residence at La Forge, today, the Villa Belleville, a former factory transformed into an artistic place in the heart of Belleville district, surrounded by artists including John One. I had the chance to meet Jacques Villeglé, Jérôme Mesnager, Misstic and many other artists throughout my career, from the sculptor René Coutelle to the glass blower Xavier de Mirbeck. I was also in residence at the EAC, Espace de l'Art Concret in Mouans-Sartoux near Cannes, during the construction of the new museum which houses an important collection, that of Sybil Albers and Gottfried Honeger for whom I have worked.
My artistic approach has always been based on the idea of freedom of creation whether it is for the choice of materials, mediums or chosen themes. Very young, attracted by painting, according to the discoveries of the moment, I liked to approach new techniques and create series. I use the medium that I consider necessary for my expression or my intuitions. For a long time, I worked in a company alternating with artistic practices. Having a professional practice, for about thirty years on various supports, I practiced oil painting before working on other techniques: collage, digigraphie (giclée), screen printing, wood engraving, photography, acrylic paint have passed through my hands according to the periods of creativity. Photography remains a field that I still use very little despite a personal archive of more than 100,000 film and digital photographs.
To turn engraving into a personal logbook, recording my observation of the world and thinking about future projects, these are the limits of the materials I experiment with. I recently started again collage technique for a new series, following an accumulation over the years of old papers and recent documents. After painting large canvases, I forced myself to practice a series of 350 collages on A4 paper. Through a new artist residency, I was able to print in digigraphie (giclée) a limited selection of these collages.
Screen printing is also for me the way to develop a diary, from an old register, which evolves from year to year, with a mixture of drawings, screen prints and collages. During some winters that are too cold in the workshop, I embark on imaginary sketches in colored inks with a fountain pen and India ink on old notebooks from computer lessons. I use paper in all forms when they have a past history or simply by recycling. Fascinated by the light of stained glass, drawings on paper, and wood engraving exercise me in this desire to create on stained glass which forces contrasts. At the moment it is wood panels that have made me come back to the strong desire to start again oil paint technique.
Born of a Belgian writer father and a German mother, translator of Paul Celan, I have always lived in popular Paris, the Halles de Paris before its demolition, the insalubrious Marais before its reconstruction, then in Belleville during the defense of the district to eventually reside in Ménilmontant. Driven by a thirst for freedom and a love of painting, in addition to being left-handed, the taste for solitude instinctively led me to a certain marginality. Born in Germany of Belgian nationality, naturalized French, from a foreign and fragmented family, I strongly felt the need to be from somewhere.
Life led me to Belleville and constituted an essential point of reference in my artistic career. The destruction of my studio in a set of old buildings, close to where Edith Piaf lived, was the starting point of my artistic approach for a few years. From the demolition of my studio transformed into a vacant lot to the recovery of materials, my work focused on disappearance and memory evolves towards a return to painting, which I have always considered to be the heart of the visual arts. Using the place during its degradation, my work focused on the memory of a popular and multicultural district; it has become an integral part of some of my art projects. I designed my installations several years in a row in May for the Open Doors of the Ateliers d'Artistes de Belleville; while I remained on the spot anchored in this place, my work evolved at the same time as the site. After the demolition of the buildings, I continued to create some of my installations there, sometimes accompanied by a dancer and a choreographer. After having exhibited for more than a decade, I revealed myself as a total artist by giving myself all the freedom of creation, and roots in front of this inner exile by finishing on massive projects of 1000 m2. Along with a team, I built there installations of large photographic formats, (The infernal circle, Married with the death). Subsequently, a choreographic project was carried out in Tokyo, Japan with the Arisaka company.
Once I became president of the Association of Artists of Belleville, I got involved in the design of an associative gallery by carrying out the work myself, and thus allowing all the artists to exhibit regularly. During this period, I was mandated by the French Ministry of Culture for the defense of visual artists, I was also mandated by recognized alternative places such as the Grange aux Belles and the Miroiterie. With the hope of promoting creative freedom, a fragile brotherhood of artists made me think more often of creating an artistic movement than of exhibiting my work in more official places. This ideal has never completely left me.
After having followed the courses of Anselm Kiefer at the Collège de France and visited the workshops of Barjac and Croissy Beaubourg, this was for me a real intellectual and aesthetic revelation in accordance with the themes of my artistic research. Since then, I have worked in a workshop provided by the city of Paris at 43 rue des Panoyaux, in Ménilmontant. My need to create remains this arid and mysterious conquest that goes beyond the codes of the contemporary art milieu where the sirens of fashion are drowning. This is the reason why I exhibit periodically.
“They have had to forge for themselves an art of living in times of catastrophe in order to be born a second time and to fight openly against the instinct of death at work in our history.
Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.”
Albert Camus’ speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, 1957 NRF Gallimard