Ceramic Sculptor Yann Masseyeff Invests Place Vendôme

Home / Culture & Technology / Ceramic Sculptor Yann Masseyeff Invests Place Vendôme
Ceramic Sculptor Yann Masseyeff Invests Place Vendôme

Born in Dakar, Yann Masseyeff is impacted by the richness of the multitude of cultural influences that surround him. He was first initiated to drawing and then turned towards ceramics. He is interested in sculpture because the emotions provided by materials and textures, reminiscences of ancestral and tribal forms that are the source of his gestures. He shapes the material with his intuition creating a primary dialogue with his sculptures, resonating his creative energy.

His humanized sculptures convey his own sensitivity and reveal his way of perceiving the world.

Currently exhibited at the Secret Gallery around an Art & Design exhibition with Reda Amalou and on the very prestigious and iconic Place Vend me around his installation Ligne de vie , Icon-Icon went to meet him.

Face to face with the secret gallery

Meeting with Yann Masseyeff

To recontextualize and introduce yourself to our readers, can you review your background? How did you come all the way to sculpture and not another form of artistic expression?

I met the art ceramicist Pascal Lacroix. I was literally fascinated to see him turning his porcelain. After several years of studying this art and a year of internship with Pascal Lacroix, I learned to master complex techniques such as reducing or enamels from the Far East. I detached myself from the virtuoso side to open myself to the creative flow by returning to the very essence of matter: shaping soil allows me to transmit my energy directly to matter.

We note in your work a very strong link with matter, especially natural materials, why is this relationship to the earth and origins so important to you?

I work the earth in a rough way, with fingers and a simple wooden stick. In this total freedom, a certain gesture was put in place, totally spontaneous. I do not make any sketches. I take the soil, give the first gestures, like a first curve, and the sculpture is made of itself, drawing its strength from this instinctive dialogue. Each sculpture is the imprint of an instant emotion. I have made thousands of them, but each one is unique. I always feel like I’m sculpting my first piece! Archaic creative energy is what animates my work, not my imagination. We all have it in us. The ancestral graphic forms that are emerging without me even looking for them were there thousands of years ago. They were sketched by tribes around the world who, of course, did not communicate with each other. These actions are common to us. They are a universal legacy. They regularly appear in some of the activities that I have been able to lead with children, who drew without thinking. My trick is to reconnect to this primordial source.

redemption
©Mikael Benard

When it comes to the colors, almost all of your pieces are made in black or white, what is the idea behind this opposition? What would the binary system expresses to you, binarity which is also found in your works in general.

Paradoxes and contrasts. Black, white. Oppositions bring us back to what man is and will remain. Time passes the man does not change and paradoxes remain. When I was young, I thought there was only one common sense. I realize more and more that this belief was false. Everyone is rooted in their convictions. In the end, no one holds the truth.

We can discover until April 30th your installation Ligne de vie on the Place Vend me, what is your approach here?

This work is an allegory about time,

And on the uniqueness of each of our lives.

A work on evolution, on uncertainty, on our time spent on earth.

In short, about mankind in the face of time and its origins.

An abstract sculpture is born from a seed, a ball, an egg

Which will evolve randomly in a form of uncertainty,

Representing this feeling between the present and the future,

While leaving its mark in the past.

This alignment represents a metamorphosis

it reminds us of the passing of time

In an inevitable way.

This evolution ends as it began

creating the cycle of life,

Leaving a unique footprint.

Like signing the identity of each of us.

Each sculpture is induced by the other in a spontaneous process,

Made with an intention of simple, archaic gesture,

As a common, tribal intention.

It invites us to this reflection.

What do you do with your life?

lifeline
©Mikael Benard

Allegory about the passing of time and the return to the origins of life, why have you chosen the Place Vend me, one of the most beautiful in Paris but also of the most luxurious one and therefore an eventual symbol of a superficial and materialistic world?

Is it precisely this contrast that interests you?

It is obviously in this place filled with symbols that we must perhaps revisit the fundamentals, right? What are we doing here on this earth knowing it’s a very short moment? This lifeline is composed of two lines: a black one and a white one that respond.

The question is, why am I me and not the other one?

You also exhibit at the Secret Gallery until July 23 alongside the architect and designer Reda Amalou in a dialogue between furniture and sculptures, how did the idea of this collaboration, this encounter was born?

We met and the look that Reda has on my works is, I think, the same as I have on his creations. The material, the curves, are graphic evidence that your creations are complementary.

You both have a strong connection to culture, origins, and travel. What are you trying to transmit through your creations?

Reda Amalou is an Architect Designer and I have always considered that there is no border between architecture, design, and plastic art.

And our collaboration on two pieces of furniture mixing sculptures and design is to me an artistic success to see at the Secret Gallery.

face to face with the secret gallery
©Mikael Benard

You collaborated with the very old Maison Daum, a glassware having also worked with many artists, how did you come up with this idea?

It was, like ofter in life, an encounter.

Translating your sculptures into crystal pieces, a totally different material, playing more with light and transparency, gives them a totally different dimension. what does this mean for you? Is this another artistic approach?

I’ve always enjoyed Daum’s work in the 1930s.

These very structured vases, in this very dense, beautiful material.

This crystal paste that allows to reveal the textures while playing on its translucency.

The story of Daum is also a constant collaboration with artists for decades

and it is a great pleasure to create and share these works with the expertise of the Daum House.

Daum art edition

Your pieces are very much focused on nostalgia for a past time, the inevitable evolution of life and passing time. This idea seems to resonate perfectly with the very disturbed news.

What affect does this trouble period have on you and your work? I imagine that now more than ever, your art becomes a way of expression and takes all its dimension.

I think that beyond a nostalgia of a past time, my pieces are anchored in our roots, our tribality in the sense close to nature. A timelessness that becomes difficult to restore, that yet is there in each of us, but asks us more and more effort to slow down this period that escapes us.

To finish this interview, at Icon-Icon, we are particularly interested in Icons, objects, experiences, or places, do you have a fetish object, a talisman, a wine or even a perfume, a smell that does not leave you?

Do you have a fact, an experience, a place that has particularly marked you in the course of your life that you would like to share with us?

Oddly I’m not that much of a fetishist but I couldn’t forget this perfume

Shalimar by Guerlain that my mother wore. These are smells rooted in me.

I try to make every day a new experience to look at things differently. To live life precisely so as not to lose the seconds that pass in spite of me.

Interview by Sebastien Girard, President of Icon-Icon

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.