Emo de Medeiros, Benin/Paris
Mempo.
Artist statement
My practice is 1) based on my conviction that art is our first and last link with sacredness and 2) built upon a single concept: that of contexture.
I compose my works, concretely and in a broader sense, from textures. As an element, texture ranges from fabric or pixels to text. As a notion it encompasses the material and the mental, and inscribes on a continuum the physical and the conceptual.
Gemini Helmet.
Contexture refers to an ensemble seen from the perspective of the transformative interrelations or interconnections between its constitutive elements (the contexture of an organism, of a novel, of a symphony, of a fresco…).
In my work, contexturing represents the dynamic process, conceptual as well as visual, which consists in mobilizing textures, be they physical or abstract, ranging from contemporary urban culture (as a fabric of signs, symbols, or practices), to machined steel, electronic music, or the figure of the artist as antipersona.
Kaleta, 2012 (performance detail).
A contexture implies and allows and infinite recontexturings. They consist in transgressing, d/e/merging cultural, aesthetic, technological, historical, geographical and social boundaries that usually separate the production and diffusion of images, sounds, objects or other artefacts of diverse origins, eras, and uses. They are subject to recontexturings such as remixings, mètissages, bricolages and/or audio-visual and objectal randomizations. This process gives birth to artworks that often happen spatially as co-optative series.
Surtenture.
My creation of a contexture is driven by three processes :
First, a rhythmic pulse, or efficient periodicity, which implies effects of reactivation, recycling, reiteration, recurrence and/or ritornello in the disposition of textures, within the artworks or between them, in their context of creation and exhibition.
Electro Fetish.
Secondly, improvisation, which determines the part of indeterminate necessary to an artwork.
Finally, collective participation, which can be induced by the collaboration with artisans and/or derived from the modalities of the exhibition or installation which allows the public to experience the artworks.