‘I am not sure I can really describe the person you would like to profile…’ There is no reason to suspect Jean-Luc Moulène of being coy. He admits it himself – he has quite simply changed. Deliberately disconcerting, in the manner of those who enjoy making others change tack, this is not the first of the French artist’s transformations. After spending some years working in communications for Thomson-Sintra ASM on ‘technical forecasting for naval engineering,’ he made his reputation in the 1990s as a photographer with a conceptual bent.
For the past ten years or so, Moulène has been making his name as a sculptor. The strange forms that emerge from his studio have been met with astounding success – at the Pinault Collection in Paris and Venice, as well as at Dia Beacon, in upstate New York, where he was invited to exhibit in 2011. But the metamorphosis he evokes with us this misty winter morning is different.
Four years ago, Moulène left the 12th arrondissement in Paris to move into a vast studio in the heart of the Perche region of France. His home is now nestled in Saint-Langis-lès-Mortagne, a hamlet in the Collines du Perche, where he had a studio designed by artist-architect Didier Faustino. ‘From the outside, it looks like a scuba diver, covered in black tire rubber, a skin that breathes from the inside,’ as he describes it.
And on the inside? The entire studio is organized around a ‘fairly concrete analysis of the phases of a work,’ he says. ‘In the most remote, darkest part of the space, there is the couch, where it all begins: in my head. And then it gradually moves toward the brightest part, which I object to the most: where the works leave.’ A library is close at hand, a drawing room to the left, and there is an office, a living room, tatami mats. Downstairs, there are models, a production space, archives, and, most importantly, a test room. ‘In my little Parisian studio, I never saw the works before showing them – I was so close to them, they were right under my nose. Now, I am constantly installing them as I work. I can get more of a distance. It’s helped my practice, having storage and access to bring crates in and out.’
He has also found a new studio manager, Marie-Laure Gilles, who is ‘brilliant, and very professional.’ For any other artist, this description would be superfluous. Not for Moulène, who likes to shape concepts and processes as much as he does physical forms. ‘Here, I can finally concentrate on the actual making. I am back to being the amateur I always wanted to be. An amateur in the strongest sense of the word: someone who loves.’
This radical move has not changed his practice, he attests, but it has doubtless changed him. ‘I still don’t know the person you are talking to very well,’ says Moulène with a touch of mischief. Has being out in the middle of nature had an impact on his creative work? ‘I don’t really know what nature is. You’d have to ask it,’ he parries. He calls on the American sweetgum trees that surround his studio to illustrate his point. In the 19th century, an engineer became interested in the amber-like resin produced by the tree – ‘he found a previously unknown molecule that he named styrax. An English chemist tried to synthesize it, but he didn’t quite succeed. Instead, he created something he called polystyrene. So, I took a block of polystyrene, hollowed it out into a half cylinder, and put it on the tree. I am asking the tree what it thinks of its ersatz. Because that is what it is about in the end: we plunder nature without asking its opinion.’
This is his revolution: in his view, he hasn’t ‘withdrawn.’ For this son of the Lot department, in the southwestern part of France, this ‘taste for the hills, for what we call the countryside, is something I have had for a long time.’ He has created new circumstances for himself, because all he is looking for, in the end, is his own experience, and that of his exhibitions’ visitors. ‘I don’t care about the form; what counts is the experience, how to make it accessible again, to make an event of it. To do that, you have to be able to bring the visitor to a standstill, to move them. When they leave, they can begin to build on that emotion.’
He moves onto questions of perception, then, on a semi-conceptual level, says, ‘this is where the piece exists. I try to make it reveal itself when the viewer needs it.’ In short, a time bomb. Known for his political series Objets de Grèves (Strike Objects) (1999-2000) and Produits de Palestine (Products of Palestine) (2002-2004), the artist has long worked on ‘political representations, because that is the spirit of the age. Now, I try to create political presences. It is entirely different.’
This is how his sculptures – sophisticated in their conception and, in their realization, either the fruit of the most high-tech processes or the humblest cobbling together – have a sense of obviousness about them. In the lunar landscape he created for the Centre Pompidou in 2017, visitors moved from one block of enigmas to the next. ‘In the end, art is an extremely serious, finely-tuned, precise farce. It has to be as hermetic as a conspiracy.’ Carrara marble, sintered powder, jesmonite, biscuit porcelain, or coated foam, verdigris bronze or lapis lazuli – the artist, who studied alchemy and the history of magic as well, produces explosive alloys and unprecedented combinations of forms.
‘If my pieces are blocks of enigmas, they are nonetheless open to interpretation. Hermeticism is a system of openings, like mysticism, which is knowledge through mysteries. And matter is a mystery. It is possible to be a materialist mystic.’ And for him the primary material is sensation.
It is hardly surprising that Moulène has been more interested in poets than artists. First and foremost, the dark Romanticism of Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, and the literary review Le Grand Jeu (1928–32). Today, he is more drawn to the Objectivist poetry of Charles Reznikoff and Manuel Joseph. ‘Hence my mistrust of language. I try to remove language from objects. I propose silent objects that have passed away from language. But I love those who are able to transfigure language enough to do something to it, just to see what it is really able to invent for us and how.’ Opposite his brand-new studio sits an old farmhouse in its original state, for the time being. He dreams of it becoming the site of his future foundation, where he promises that poets will have pride of place. But when? ‘For me, since I do not have an heir, it is simply a way of passing on my legacy. But it would be impossible to give a precise timetable: I would have to work back from the day I die, so I am in no rush.’
Jean-Luc Moulène is represented by Galerie Chantal Crousel (Paris), Thomas Dane Gallery (London, Naples), Miguel Abreu Gallery (New York), Galerie Pietro Spartà (Chagny), and Galerie Greta Meert (Brussels).
His solo exhibition 'Jean-Luc Moulène and Teams' at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania, will end April 1, 2024. From February 7, 2024, he will participate in the group exhibition "When Forms Come Alive" at the Hayward Gallery, London.
Emmanuelle Lequeux is a writer based in Paris.
Published on January 31, 2024.
English translation: Jacob Bromberg.
All photos by Thomas Chéné for Paris+ par Art Basel.