This artist is Layticia Audibert. She enjoys laughing, singing, drinking, smoking, learning, painting—in fact, she likes a multitude of things, but to put it simply, she just loves life. And this life, Layticia Audibert presents to you on her canvases in which she first expresses her emotions, but these emotions “spread and touch other people.”
Nice-Premium: Soon you will have an exhibition in our region. For those who do not know you, I invite you to introduce your art. How would you precisely define your art?
Layticia Audibert: To tell the truth, I will have 3 exhibitions in the region:
– From June 25 to July 14, 2007, opening on Friday, June 29: ART & FIRE gallery, 41 rue de France, 06000 NICE (www.art-and-fire.fr)
– On July 5, 2007, a special evening at the HI HOTEL, 3 avenue des Fleurs, 06000 NICE (www.hi-hotel.net): Hi, is a design boutique hotel with contemporary luxury created by matali crasset (former collaborator of Philippe Starck).
F communications (Laurent Garnier) organizes the sound design and programming of DJ music mixes.
– From July 14 until the end of September, an exhibition at the Hotel Les Vergers de St Paul , 940 route de la Colle, 06570 SAINT PAUL DE VENCE, tel: 04.93.32.94.24 (in a prestigious setting, close to the Maeght Foundation)
To answer your question about how I would define my art, I think I would qualify it as conceptual minimalism. I use various materials, steel, razor blades (which are somewhat my “trademark”), refined yet sometimes brutal materials, which express my own feelings through the interplay of word and image, a game I try to establish with the viewer, and in this game, there are no rules… I love the idea of being able to create canvases that enter into people and into their homes.
N-P: What made you want to pick up the brushes?
L.A.: My first love is writing, and one day I wanted to go beyond words. I started when I arrived in Paris by painting canvases to have very personal decoration. People who came to my home congratulated me and ordered canvases. But I did not plan to embark on this adventure. Then one day, someone who was dear to me and who had real experience in the artistic field as a gallery owner and then as an organizer of artistic events really believed in me and encouraged me to produce and offered to exhibit me. Everything started like that. And from there, everything happened very quickly; many people helped me in this approach, I received a lot of support, and I had the honor of having my first opening at Mandalaray, a high place of Parisian nights. I was fortunate that people took an interest in my work. It was just two months ago…
N-P: How is a canvas born, for example?
L.A.: Most often the image of the canvas appears to me, it comes to me. A color that imposes itself. A curve that advances. It’s quite indefinable, like a hunger, a need to express something. To expel. Canvases are born from my emotions, from my tensions. The title, which has real importance in my work, comes to me with this image, as an obvious choice. Sometimes the title comes through the door first; it almost taunts me. Like a game.
N-P: Are your paintings somewhat autobiographical?
L.A.: They are insofar as I express an emotion and a certain aesthetic sense that guides this emotion. This emotion is, of course, initially personal, but it spreads and touches other people. I try to express emotions that touch everyone at some point in their lives—love, pain, fear, anger, desire, joy, sadness, loneliness, dreams…
For example, the razor blades play on several meanings. Their use is both symbolic and aesthetic. The blades, their coldness, the idea of suffering like a blade on a wrist, but also the blade in its cosmetic value, the quest for life, men and women who have shaved since time immemorial, making themselves beautiful, beauty as a quest for eternal youth, a search for eternity. The search for God? And there is the play on words with the soul. Its chaos, its questions, its pains, its tears, its cuts.
N-P: What are your inspirations?
L.A.: Life, people, encounters, feelings, the desire to share my emotions with the world, the desire to be in the world…
N-P: In a comment on your Myspace, one can read ‘There is a bit of Rothko’ in your paintings. Is he an artist who inspired you?
L.A.: I was very flattered by this comment! Myspace is an incredible universe. I’ve been there just a month and I’ve received over 22,000 visits on my page, people send me emails or comments every day to encourage me or tell me they appreciate my work. It’s a very beautiful adventure.
As for Rothko, I think we join in our ‘Nietzschean’ influence or when he said that ‘the tragic experience invigorates’ and ‘is for me the only source of art.’ In his canvases, he expresses himself exclusively by means of color, sometimes monochrome, sometimes composed.
I mainly work with assembly, materials added to color, steel as a source of light that changes color throughout the day, like slightly ajar doors.
