Nelle sue opere scompare, anziché comparire: lui è uno che si annulla in nessuno per poi diventare tutti. Fonde l’arte nella vita e ne fa poesia.
Scomoda i grandi protagonisti della cultura di ogni tempo, icone storiche e leggende antiche, temi importanti e vita di tutti i giorni: ibrida i linguaggi in un pastiche visivo che alla fine porta anche l’osservatore a porsi più di un paio di domande inaspettate sulla propria identità.
E una volta compiuta questa missione, Alexandre Mury prosegue in un nuovo inizio la sua instancabile ricerca.
[ENGL.]
Within his artworks he disappears, rather than appearing: he is one that vanishes into nobody for then becoming everybody. He merges art into life and makes poetry of it. He brings the great protagonists of every culture, historic and contemporary icons, important themes and everyday life into it: he hybridizes the languages into a visual pastiche that finally brings the viewer too into asking himself more than a couple of questions. And once this mission is accomplished, Alexandre Mury continues on his own unceasing research…
Aware of how wide and multitasking the experience of wearing the label “Artist” is supposed to be: what’s your artistic identity? And what’s your real identity behind the artist?
During my childhood I was told that I was an artist: at school, when I was only two years old, one of my teachers called me “my Van Gogh”. I loved it so much that, since then, I’ve been trying to enhance it for all my life: and the thing I loved most about Van Gogh was not just his painting in itself, but the fact that he had been making lots of self-portraits.
Tell us something about your background: when and how did you feel that art would have been your expressive way? What was your personal and educational path to achieve it?
There are no artists in my family: my parents are artisans, a dressmaker and a carpenter. I grew up among the tools and I developed manual skills: making up things has always been fun for me. I graduated in Social Communication, I haven’t received any artistic education, but my passion for art turned me into a compulsive researcher.
What kind of imagery and experiences do you draw the inspiration for your artworks from? Is there a boundary line between life and work, or, as it seems from your artworks, it is so faint that you become part of your works too?
I work all the time: the daily life inspires me aesthetic and philosophical meditations. It’s a double-way approach, deconstructing and rebuilding the idea of identity and identification. Within my work, I don’t see myself as an individual, yet as a social being. Maybe this aesthetic experience of my work raises the idea that everything is performance: yet, it’s a whole blend of lots of artistic possibilities involving sculpture, drawing, painting, installation and photography. It’s a hybrid structure, a process where the whole idea comes from this multiple ego, in pieces.
In your artworks you assume, almost wear, various identities, they’re like quotes from renowned references: who are these “protagonists” and what significance or tales do you commit to them? What visions are held into and offered by your artworks?
Let’s talk about iconography, representation, originality, aesthetics and temporality of art. The “Tableau vivant” is less important: it’s a game of references, suggesting also a little freedom of interpretation. Actually, my work just aims at stating the ambiguity: the need for rebooting everything, the world, the things, time, space, ourselves, and art.
Living, looking at and narrating reality armed with the twisting filter of imagination: according to you, what values does “being creative” hold and act for? How is the world watched by Alexandre Mury?
Nobody creates starting from nothing. I’m a very curious person and I always try to experience new combinations: between the body language and the cultural values, representing a dialogue without representation, calling into question the taming of the glance. I think that the ideas are always moving, so an object doesn’t look the same every time we look at it. Putting myself in the place of another is a practice of self-awareness. I live art. These symbolic swaps happen also as emotional swaps: I draw life as an endless poem … everything can be art and I think I can turn everything into poetry.
If I say “imitation of life” (the theme of this Hachi Mag issue n.d.r.): what comes into your mind?
I recall the poem “Autopsychography”, by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, a passage of which says:
(The poet is a faker.
He Fakes it so completely,
He even fakes he's suffering
The pain he's really feeling.)
