L’herbier (petit Trianon)
2007 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
43 x 98,5 x 100 cm
Stéphane Calais
L’herbier (petit Trianon) consists of four “realistic” drawings of plants, screenprinted on transparent PVC. Relying on drawing as a study, this work resembles many sketchbook drawings of the artist, but also alludes to the series titled “Magnolia”. “The subject is a kind of cultural minimum (the plant) and the herbarium tends to this minimum,” Calais suggests. This work follows the tradition of still life painting, ranging from technical mastery to vanity. The metaphor of the plant as a network and an ornament is recurrent theme in his work as well as arborescent typography, wall painting in the works “Le haricot magique du petit Jack,”(Little Jack’s bean) (1997) as well as sculpture gardens. Evoking a rococo spirit, his drawings surfaces’ shimmer like a glaze, quivering at the slightest breath. One can well imagine that L’Herbier ( the H erbarium) could have taken place in the Petit Trianon at the garden of Versailles, signifying a balance between simplicity and the richness of ornament. In an interview, the artist spoke of this work like a house of cards – everything is visible and transparent, the whole is obvious. Yet, the overlap of the screenprint detailed in a “block sediment” of different sheets alludes (by surprise) to images – the slightly blurred images are not immediate and clear.
From screen-printing to sculpture, as well as painting and installation, Stéphane Calais multiplies the figures of style, underpinned by the lines of drawing, all in playful and sweet world, at times disturbing. All mediums used by the artist, associated intimately with the world of drawing, exist as extensions of the sheet of paper. His series of “sculpture collage” titled “Ornement, crime et délice” illustrate his interest in the density and variety of styles and materials: nets hanging from the ceiling supporting basketballs, plants, feathers, etc. Decoration is not incidental, but is a dynamic network internal to his works. Collage is “a way to settle the real” as the artist suggests and “to cross temporalities, always on the mode of the diverse.” While some violence is present between the lines, like all tales, his work contains two levels of reading. For example, Calais is fascinated by the work and the tragic fate of Bruno Schulz, a Polish-Jewish writer and artist, who “is one of the designers of fantasy, this great line that forges a truly global world” as depicted in the installation “La chambre de Schultz” (2007-2008). Stéphane Calais was born in 1967. He lives and works in Paris.
Colors:
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