Pollution
Exhibition from 16 september to 18 november 2017
Pictures Blaise Adillon
An exhibition at the EAP, Espace Arts Plastiques Madeleine Lambert, House of the People located 12 rue Eugène - Peloux, 69200 Vénissieux
In resonance with the Lyon Biennial 2017 / Focus. On the occasion of the exhibition an interview was held between the director of the art center Xavier Julien and Niek van de Steeg and is available for visitors in the exhibition guide.
Your works have very close ties to reality, including administration and industry, would you say that these are the "forces in the presence"?
Yes indeed both the administration and the industry are creative entities. And one of the aspects of his creation is a form, an aesthetic, which sometimes manifests itself in forms like sculpture; the quarry, the pillars of the high voltage lines, the infrastructures and the modifications of the landscape and the city. The administration creates rules, limits, frames and thus very precise forms in the best case. But when the administration turns crazy, the aesthetics of bachelors machines and sometimes the Kafkaesque chaos are not far away.
In your works, the lines and the color produce very strong optical effects: do you seek to provoke a vertigo for the spectator?
This is not the goal. Dizziness blurs the tracks and creates an interesting neutral space because undefined. The spaces with fuzzy borders is much richer and interesting than the neutral in gray.
You put yourself on the scene and in danger in some of your videos (by diving in the Rio Tinto, or while jogging on a radioactive site).
Would you say that it is a way to testify to your total involvement in your work, a very literal "commitment" staff ?
It is also the inconsiderate.
In our society the dangers of any kind are circumscribed by many taboos and it's also a huge market for prevention through security, insurance and regulation remains until now a law areas private that allow to cross the line of interdicts. In the works exceeded represents both the freedom of the artist to engage and to wet his shirt as the same time the representation of the madness, anything, or otherwise work in connection with a work of Alighiero Boetti entitled Shaman / Showman. Was it a commentary on the work and action of Joseph Beuys I do not know. In any case, there is in the actions of Beuys very clear manifestations of the clowness. Being one of the aspects of the Fluxus movement to which he belonged.
Your works use a variety of techniques (ceramics, wood, metal, video, installation): is it important for you to work with artisans, external specialists ?
No, not so much. What is important to say that my work is a manifestation of multiple collaborations; I rarely work alone and it is often difficult to tell who is behind the forms and achievements. Already at the workshop level I work a lot with Tineke van Aalzum, who is at the origin or sometimes finishing of many of my achievements. Moreover, the next exhibitions will be signed now by the name Atelier Niek van de Steeg.
In fact, the artisans, technicians of the National School of Fine Arts of Lyon help me a lot to the realization of my works. What really makes the work progress is the ordering of exhibitions, achievements, publications and editions, residencies and travels, which create constraints and exchanges.
Recently, the sculpture, La Colonne bleue, which I created for the exhibition at Malbuisson in the Jura, led to the realization of Icons in this exhibition.
You recently published an artist's book, La Maison de la Matière Première, can you tell us a few words about it ?
It is a work of command or better known as an invitation from Valérie Cudel who is editor. This editor is called Captures Editions. She publishes artists' books. I wanted to make a book on the latest fiction in my work which is the House of Raw Material, MMP, which questions the reality principle, that of exploitation and its networks.
This edition of the House of Raw Matter follows the edition of 15 special prints made in the context of the exhibition in the Art Center Le Lait in Albi and in the art space of Art3 in Valence in 2012. For this edition I intensified this epic on the theme of the raw material with the addition of a fourth portrait, that of a fisherman, Cédric Giroud whose history is linked to a viscous synthetic oil detected in the Rhone, polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly called PCBs. I drew and painted in the format of a double page of the book. And the drawings, paintings pose a number of questions;
What happens before the raw material arrives, after various transformations, on the market? I was interested in coffee, asbestos and uranium. How does the man sculp the territory to collect these raw materials? From this exploitation are born landscapes emblematic of human creation. So I unfold the thread of a story that follows fragmented paths of what documents teach us; from the beginning of the exploitation until the current phase and its future. I used the close-up, the constructive elements, the overview, the articles of the press, the portrait, to imagine and to build a structure that it serves as a red thread. This wooden structure, the base and foundation of the MMP, becomes in this drawings a set composed of elements, like a puzzle. There are many figures, figures of history, sculpture, painting. Thus, I wanted to enrich the raw material from all points of view by a dizzying staging and editing.
What role does fiction play in your work as an artist ?
Fiction is the lubricant and a fuel that can image reality.