Mathias Kiss

MATHIAS KISS:

What’s crazy is that originally, it was a house to live in daily. But I tend to escape the daily grind, like a child who locks himself in his room with his toys to escape the more “realistic” spaces of the house like the bathroom or the kitchen. Very quickly, the workspace took over that of the habitat. And then, I also consider it as a place of meetings and exchanges, in which we nourish ourselves.

MATHIAS KISS:

We all have in mind the image of his bed-installation, in which I completely identify. At home, if someone moves a square by 2 cm, it disturbs me, and I will put it back 2 cm. There is no point doing this, it is in my construction as an artist. But paradoxically, I no longer live there. This place is so invested by the art works that I refuse to disturb it with my dirty laundry. It’s like a painting, touching it means having to redo it, so I put it under a bell jar. And then I really need the box to be frozen so that I can build the world of tomorrow, create the new piece. My daughter will also tell you how much of a nightmare it is to stay there with the constant fear of damaging a work of art by letting a drop of water escape from the bathroom… It’s a precious place, which also expresses the idea of ​​preservation, like a museum, a foundation.

MATHIAS KISS:

The last time I saw my therapist, I told her that I felt like I was working in a foundation. She replied: “Hey! You used the word “foundation,” and that’s what you didn’t have when you were a child.” It’s funny how we always look for what we lack in our deficiencies and neuroses.

MATHIAS KISS:

It’s like a cloud passing in the sky through a window, I always see the one coming behind. So I need to clear my head by transforming my place… Sometimes, neither my wife nor my relatives have time to see my experiments pass, a wall color for example, that I have already recovered. It’s a real laboratory.

MATHIAS KISS:

Ah, absolutely. Of course, removing the pretentious or pompous side of the idea of ​​a masterpiece, it is a form of accomplishment. It is even downright the evolution of a single profession that began at the age when I had to sand walls. Only, in my way of doing things, I was less into sanding than into polishing, sculpting or caressing a wall, the condition for obtaining a beautiful “blur” effect when applying paint. Ultimately, sanding is learning to enjoy the pains of everyday life: what you can’t avoid, you have to know how to embrace it. Even though I came from a background of academic failure, this practice was already a way for me to express something else. I had the ambition to create a whole universe.

MATHIAS KISS:

There is the candy and the candy wrapper. Here, we are talking about the box. My choice of places is also based on chance, on which I obviously bounce. What interests me is what I do there. Indeed, I rented a small apartment on rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in a noble and loaded 18th century architecture. Starting from this neoclassical base, I pushed it into a Kubrickian spirit with cornices that come out of the walls, that go up and down to the ground. It was a way of twisting its neck while magnifying it, but above all of projecting it into the 21st century. Today, I turned the page on this “18th century” manifesto to invest in contemporary architecture. Yes, the tiling was awful and it resonated… But at the same time, it offered me carte blanche with another vocabulary. The more beautiful the place, the more you are a prisoner of it, the poorer it is, the more you can dress it up.

MATHIAS KISS:

It is not necessarily linked to the place, but it is true that since I have been here, I have the impression of speaking out. Before, I was mainly in reaction against my “peers” (but also my “fathers” because I include the “daron” in the story). Coming from academic failure and faced with the dogmas imposed by the Compagnons, I was in rebellion, so I twisted the necks of the cornices, I crumpled the mirrors. Fortunately, I am 52 years old, I have calmed down. But thanks to these years of revolt, I have built a vocabulary with which I express myself freely today.

MATHIAS KISS:

Indeed, it is finally finished with all my works in it. It’s as if I went on stage because I knew my text! Whereas before, I wasn’t ready. It was like a rebus, I was missing a drawing to finish it, and now, I know where I come from, I know where I’m going. It’s not easy for an artist to be able to understand himself, to know why this fucking unconscious tells you to do this or that, why instead of mountain biking on Sunday, you repaint your walls 14 times. I never conceptualize beforehand. I find the meaning later, thanks to my perspective, my childhood, my journey.

MATHIAS KISS:

It’s funny, my son-in-law, when he saw the latest pieces made for Christofle, said to himself: that’s it, it’s the Kiss brand! After the cornice, the Ligue 1 trophy, my shapes are now recognizable. As for mentors, I think especially of Jean-Pierre Reynaud. With his use of white tiles, the most basic, the least precious, the least expressive material there is, he made it an incredible signature. That’s strong! And then on another level, I find myself very much in the trajectory of gallery owner Kamel Mennour. His father was a house painter. His gallery has become one of the most respected, but he has always managed to keep this democratizing approach to his profession. He was the one who freed me from my complexes in my relationship with art by allowing me to acquire, at the time, a series of Araki’s first Polaroids. At the same time, he considered me as one of his first collectors. I attach great importance to the intimacy of this bond.

MATHIAS KISS:

Thank you for understanding this. I started as a painter-worker, then as a craftsman who manipulates materials such as gold leaf. Paradoxically, my job as an artist consisted of desacralizing the decorative arts. This involved creating golden cornices that “smurf” in all directions. I could have painted them in fluorescent yellow, it would have been the same thing. My use of gilding seeks more to free the worker than to claim mastery of an exceptional art. Today, making the Ligue 1 trophy is a way of offering a dream to all the little boys who, like me at the time, were looking for a model and symbols to identify with.

MATHIAS KISS:

Yes, it’s true, with completely different universes: architects, journalists, musicians, workers. In any case, they are kind, gifted and sensitive people. We probably share the same spirit, quite childish. I think we have remained children.

MATHIAS KISS:

They are bosses for me, they have been there for 30 years. We are getting older, generations pass, but they remain references for young people. AIR, Nicolas Godin’s band, and more broadly the French Touch musical movement, corresponded to a very cutting-edge music at the beginning, which few people knew. Today it is a classic that closes the Olympic Games. The NTM band, without ever really falling into line, is now anchored in our heritage and our collective unconscious. From the beginning, I saw them as authors in their own right of the French cultural landscape. I had even created a street sign saying: “Joey Starr, French author-composer”, with a manifesto text that spoke of affiliation with Brassens or Gainsbourg, without mentioning rap or hip-hop.

MATHIAS KISS:

Recently, I took my son to a sky construction site in Thailand. He is studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. Cut off from our daily lives, from our culture, we were able to fully become aware of the link between gesture and brain. One brings to the other. Painting is also meditative, there is a spiritual side. Not to mention the links with the values ​​of sport, such as the taste for effort or results.