INTERVIEW 
  with CHRISTIAN JACCARD
    «...beyond the artist's reach »

Elan d'Arts : Since the 60' and 70's and the apparition of fire in your works, combustion in its many forms is always present in your new productions.
What is the most important or most meaningful aspect for you : the moment of combustion itself or the traces left behind ?

C Jaccard : Pulverulent traces left by flames coming from thermic gel are full of the symbolism of dust. Some energy of creation that can be compared to seeds or flower pollen.

In the book of Genesis, mankind is made out of ground dust. Its posterity is also compared to dust. It is also identified as the end and some peoples used to cover their head with dust as a mark of mourning. One may even find hints of dust of death.

The black ash is another emblematic aspect of the traces left by combustion. Black is the colour of the universal substance or materia prima and of the essential indiferentiation. It absorbs light and does not give it back. It evokes the darkness of the night, the original obscurity, the abyss with unknown depth. But beyond that, there is the fertile ground, the receptacle that prepares a new birth. And in my dreams, darkness is an invitation to be back in contact with my instinctive and primitive universe which I need to enlighten, while the white colour rather oppresses me.

EA : You have had many exhibitions abroad and especially in Japan. Have you identified some proximity between certain local cultures and combustion?

CJ : When I travel to Japan, the presence of our occidental culture momentaneously disappears from my mind and I therefore like to exhibit over there. Although it is complex, full of traditions and has a fascinating history, the Japanese world has not induced side effects on my artistic objectives. Exhibiting over there may have constituted some kind of personal therapy but my artistic research already integrated the thematic of knots, the problematic of fire and the trinom 'black-red-white' which is also very present in Japanese philosophy.

EA : You have recently worked with Eric Seydoux on a silk screen print on chromolux that represents combustion. Can you explain this work and especially how your propose to connect combustion and multiple works?

CJ : Inclusion of combustion residues on a surface is an uncertain and paradoxal way to cristalize and evidence a desagregation. By its transfer on a silk weft and then on a chromolux with a mirror effect, it loses its ephemeral status and its duplication is a new form of sedimentation - a gross transposition of an original trace.

EA : You have been a special guest in the reknown exhibition « L'art dans les chapelles » in summer 2006, together with Nicolas Fedorenko and Bernard Moninot. I have recently visited your ephemeral work in the Trinity Chapel – Castennec in Bieuzy-les-Eaux in Bretanny. The white walls are covered with combustion traces. The result is breath-taking and magnificent and seems to be in total harmony with this sacred building. For this special occasion would you say that you've had a 'spiritual' approach?

CJ :Over there, it is all famine, black pest, 'hundred-years-war' as the basis of the local and harsh history. It is also an ancient place of worship built on a site visited for centuries by hundreds of generations. All this triggers in my mind a strong emotion and therefore this approach of an ephemeral production of which precarity corresponds to my fragility and thought process. Its dusty and feeble shades reminds me of the weaknesses of my memory. It is also the other metaphore describing the burning revelation of the divine presencei, in this holy place that has been haunted by the spectre of the 'burning-bush'.

EA: Since the beginning of the 90's, you have realised several ephemeral works in places full of a strong history, like 'le Puits Couriot' in the mine museum in Saint-Etienne (F), 'la Friche de la Seita' at the 'Belle-de-Mai' in Marseilles (F), The Charles Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine (F) and, as previously mentioned, in the Trinity Castennec chapel. How do you perceive the ephemeral essence in these works? Have you ever thought of a longer presence for these masterpieces?

CJ : I consider these works as furtive and nomadic, rapid gestures like some flames which mobility of energies are combined and placed side by side, where the performance of fire and its offsprings – in this case, the flames – are the active and primordial phase of being ephemeral. Even though I am the instigator and the pyronaute, my production only accompanies the achievement of the sublime and ignigene erection of the incandescent sex. I understand that beyond this ephemeral moment, my trace is no more than surveying the opacity of a place that was before full of life where density and history stand beyond the artist's reach.

Paris, October 10, 2006

Christian Jaccard Combustion, mai 2006

Original signed and numbered silkscreen
on Chromolux More info