Sophie viz
The gambler, the kid, the housemaster, the impersonator, the trickster, the stranger, the drunk... do they have a puppetmaster ? Are they dancing their own choreaorgraphy? Do they know the rules and are they being played? Are they faking? Are they guilty? A crime scene happening at a dinner party. with eeveryone around the table. table guests hosts food and games laid out on the table stains cutlery stools
overlooked behaviors. behavioral types. interactions. unsaid untold unknown? emotional commodities sculptural work that through shapes materials and colors are building narratives from pre existing common knowledges, formal language and connotations, bias and clichés. things that are oftne underlooked but always trusted. as if they had proven to be true in the past, or validated by the elders. Creating their own type of story telling, mimicking traditions and potential passing on of knwoledge. They are made out of layers of references coming from different cultures and times, therefore creating a blurred background for a potential story happening between the viewer and the sculptre. viewer super important. how he reacts how he deals wit his own type of knowledge and implement it into his understanding of the piece. how much he is able to trust the sculpture or not. is he playing the game. set of cards. chess poker. a good or a bad hand? combination of pieces. they have their own personality. family or social structures, hierarchy, power relations.
theater functionality and decoration. use and representational display. powerplay. power structures. diners, weddings theater sets. props decor
crime scenes. detective stories. stiffness duration
relation to writing within storytelling. what if the storyteller is lying?s characters being types what is the reader you want to produce? i want people to fantasize and surrender at the same time skills. cheating lying stealing. a sort of disrespectful or careless wanderer.
something situated between their real function, their common use, and their cultural history.
fast people and decelerated objects talk about references movies . chinese dishes and meal. chinese mobsters meeting in restaurants. at eveery moment somebody can shoot. they are laughing and talking loud so that noone knows who is more scared john woo scene gun inside bird cage but i dont know if im looking for that noisy moment. maybe into some kind of judgemental stiffness. you observ them as much as they observ you.
at the same time you are here to let yourself go the deliacies of celebration, food, flesh and flavors, and at the same time you cheer no to be poisoned, you drink fast not to feel unconfortable, you don't finish your plate not to appear afamished. do you have to mimic the housemaster or should you rather be this mysterious stranger? everyone is balancing out depending on the others. what you eat depends on what your neighbor drinks, and what you say depend on what your other neighbor thinks, or what you think he thinks. its quite a fascinating comportamental choreagraphy existing through rafined dishes, cutlery, clothes, beverages, common places and looks, and how the carpet feels under your feet. some much more is happening than what you see, but actually if you closely, or if you take a step back the mascarade reveals itself, as if it was waiting for it. ref/inspirations: the way i gather information is super scattered and diverse. maybe artists are not that influential even though i look at it a lot. or maybe influential in an unconscious way.. Inspirations come a lot from cooking practices, social etiquette, role playing, card decks and various games related to it but also their reading, like tarot for instance. middle age banquet engravings. all those different things that are layering this nice social moment of gathering, meeting, sharing, having a nice time but where power play and social structures withing groups are really influent. the mix of these two aspects really interests me in the type of story telling i would like to generate. Inspirations also come a lot from experience. i keep my ears and eyes open and i can use materials from the everyday, unnoticed things and interactions, or more exotic extracts of travels. I digest everyting and shake it and turn it into sth really different that is my own. i ve been observing, stealing, distorting so much than sometimes i dont really know the origins anymore and i like that. maybe talk about my position as an artist that robs, reuses, without some mch regard. unethical pieces? where is the moral if there is one?
research strands families and story telling social interactions. how the people (storytellers, elders) and things (furniture, objects, books) involved in that will distort lie cheat and play upon that. generate characters and decor. a cast and a set for a theater play like. generating characters and sets that can be part of various stories. lets say its about a wedding meal, maybe a piece could the protective mother, the stubborn child and the drunk uncle, depending on the crowd, their position in the room, and the hour of the day. also add some props, as if it was a crime scene and the viewer would be looing for the killer or the weapon thinking of it as a potential theater stage where you can be part of. interply between the piece and you, as if you were part of the cast as well. i'm trying to give them their indentity through different things. one of them could be the research of materiality and what is is able to induce. How materials and techniques can provide a personality to an object, an attitude and a tone. it can lead to more affectional/emotional readings such as oh this could be a noisy drunk and this could be a dark silent person. its really easy and exciting, depending on the material you use to imply those elements that generate an autonomous personality. its not necessarily through the material itself but also through shape, height, making process, relation to other pieces. a lot of my pieces ae more or less human sized. then their 'life' can also come from references to ohter cultures, traditions, tales and stories, from different places, that i mix together to give these objects a relation to duration and narratives.
im intrigued by these animals or antropomorphic features taht have been given to furniture or objects in general throughout time. as if it was giving the personality or power of the animal, suggesting more than just the function, but also a potential subject with its own existence
use a lot of examples, stories, furnitures, movies, maybe even as a starting point for description, a way in. chinese gangsters movie, meetings in restaurant antropomorphic furniture tarot characters: le bateleur the trickster the stranger maybe use them as beginning of paragraphs or entries talk about issues: position as the artist, the maker, the decider, what are expectations from the viewer, what reading am i pushing for and how am i doing it? moral ethic. theft and bluff. talk in a chronological way, in terms of problems, solutions and changes, and where im at no due to all this. talk about the titles? difference between what im inspired by food abndance, excess, noise, fat, heavy, and the looks of what i make that is more or less the opposite. where does that difference occur? do i even acknowledge it?
i often like to distance myself from from the references i use, to make sure they wont be taken too literaly. thats also why i like the idea of the bluff, the playful lie. it can make things less serious and more accessible. this thing of towers is coming from this structurql interest around the braid, but in a wider sense, it also comes from my wish to create sculptures that could be in between structures and figures. their human size and thier being part of a serie generate what could be read as a family or any other kind of social group. and their structural potential could be read as metaphor for the set of rules part of the functioning of a group family. like a power play between the characters that would be implied through their height and size; the tiny the stocky, the tall, the imposing. Im working on creating those scenarios with families of objects that could have been invited to a wedding, a diner party... or maybe its a crime scene taking place somewhere in a summerhouse
picture potential surroundings, a smell