French Artist OX Answers A Few Of PublicAdCampaign's Questions
Every once in a while we come across an artist whose work seems to be very in line with our own over here at PublicAdCampaign. We like to ask them a few questions about their intentions and motivations. French artist OX took the time to answer our request and the results are given below.
Why do you create work in the public?
I do not create my works in public, however I do install them in public places. First, I select locations by closely examining a specific area, then I do the painting in my studio, and only then is it installed outside in public view. I see my work as “installation” rather than “performance”. It is a very free way of envisaging artistic production.
Why do you create work over/using outdoor advertising?
I have always thought that billboards, because they are similar to huge paintings hung in the landscape, provide an extraordinary support on which to show my paintings. At the beginning, I used them only as a means for bringing my work to the public eye and to publicize it in a quick and effective way, but without giving the surrounding context any particular attention. Currently, my art is the same but I now take the site into account, up to the point even where it often dictates my graphic choices and I sometimes leave pieces of the advertising image visible.
Tell us something about where you live and your relationship to your city.
I live in Bagnolet, a suburb less than 1 km outside Paris, where I have pasted more than 130 posters on free-expression-panels (designed for non-commercial posters) over a period of 4 years. I imagine the town as a recreation ground, which I view as a three-dimensional composition in which I place disturbing visual elements, whose presence will become a sort of photographic still life.
How would you describe your relationship with advertising?
Advertising is omnipresent in our lives, it feeds our consumer addiction, it exploits and recycles artistic creation and it finances it. It forms a part of my imagination, I draw on its imagery to create and I use its means to communicate. Although I sometimes divert it’s meaning, I do not have the pretension of fighting it.
Having done both, is there a difference between working in France and New York?
Yes, there is a difference. I think it is less risky to practice this art in France. With the Ripoulins in New York in 1985, there were no billboards available for my work, so I pasted my paintings directly on worksite boardings or private walls and even on a roof at Central Park, which caused problems with the owners and the police, and we were even taken to court. I no longer work in this manner.
Tell us one of your favorite moments working on the street.
Without a doubt, the very first time I pasted my work on a billboard! More recently, a favorite moment was one very cold winter morning when I had to mix antifreeze with my paste and then climb onto my slippery car roof to carry out my art billposting, even though I was alone it was a moment of jubilation. And of course, there are many other memorable times.
If you could run a fantasy camp, what would it be?
At first, when I read this question, I imagined Fantasy Camp to mean a sort of combination between Spring Break and a Hippy group, where you do body painting in the setting sun . . . . then I thought of two projects I worked on, one in which I took part called “Holidays and Painting”, and another project which has never been carried out : “Festival of Color”.
My idea would be to propose a range of actions to enable people to celebrate their favorite colors.
Why do you create work in the public?
I do not create my works in public, however I do install them in public places. First, I select locations by closely examining a specific area, then I do the painting in my studio, and only then is it installed outside in public view. I see my work as “installation” rather than “performance”. It is a very free way of envisaging artistic production.
Why do you create work over/using outdoor advertising?
I have always thought that billboards, because they are similar to huge paintings hung in the landscape, provide an extraordinary support on which to show my paintings. At the beginning, I used them only as a means for bringing my work to the public eye and to publicize it in a quick and effective way, but without giving the surrounding context any particular attention. Currently, my art is the same but I now take the site into account, up to the point even where it often dictates my graphic choices and I sometimes leave pieces of the advertising image visible.
Tell us something about where you live and your relationship to your city.
I live in Bagnolet, a suburb less than 1 km outside Paris, where I have pasted more than 130 posters on free-expression-panels (designed for non-commercial posters) over a period of 4 years. I imagine the town as a recreation ground, which I view as a three-dimensional composition in which I place disturbing visual elements, whose presence will become a sort of photographic still life.
How would you describe your relationship with advertising?
Advertising is omnipresent in our lives, it feeds our consumer addiction, it exploits and recycles artistic creation and it finances it. It forms a part of my imagination, I draw on its imagery to create and I use its means to communicate. Although I sometimes divert it’s meaning, I do not have the pretension of fighting it.
Having done both, is there a difference between working in France and New York?
Yes, there is a difference. I think it is less risky to practice this art in France. With the Ripoulins in New York in 1985, there were no billboards available for my work, so I pasted my paintings directly on worksite boardings or private walls and even on a roof at Central Park, which caused problems with the owners and the police, and we were even taken to court. I no longer work in this manner.
Tell us one of your favorite moments working on the street.
Without a doubt, the very first time I pasted my work on a billboard! More recently, a favorite moment was one very cold winter morning when I had to mix antifreeze with my paste and then climb onto my slippery car roof to carry out my art billposting, even though I was alone it was a moment of jubilation. And of course, there are many other memorable times.
If you could run a fantasy camp, what would it be?
At first, when I read this question, I imagined Fantasy Camp to mean a sort of combination between Spring Break and a Hippy group, where you do body painting in the setting sun . . . . then I thought of two projects I worked on, one in which I took part called “Holidays and Painting”, and another project which has never been carried out : “Festival of Color”.
My idea would be to propose a range of actions to enable people to celebrate their favorite colors.
Labels: ad takeovers, France, interviews, Other Artists, OX
1 Comments:
Gawd, where are TO's and NY's "free-expression-panels"
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