Citing his adopted-from-René-Magritte “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” spirit, Mercier explains that Diamants series plays with multiple planes of representation. There’s the kaleidoscopic nature of the diamond itself that pulls in the surrounding colors and shapes and, though he studied a large crystal to pattern some of the paintings, he outlined others using his mind’s eye. Still, “I always joke that I have no imagination,” Mercier says. “Society is responsible for the imagination I have, it’s just that I’m looking at things and I see what’s missing in between.”
