Why ?

Today we witness inside the art scene, numerous ephemeral and fictional interventions, questioning the artist’s status, the value of art, the sales modalities and recognition of artwork.
Necessity and personal desire invent a form of artistic transversal effectiveness giving back to art its conceptual strength and its will for openness towards the world. This desire brought me to the conception of the Art Wall Sticker project, as an attempt to put into equation a certain number of parameters and global artistic trends encountered inside a global artistic reality constantly in mutation. Such stakes imply the creation of an artistic production with strong social “penetration” capacity, towards the market and the population not forgetting to include the appearance of consumable and decorative lightness.
I consider decorativeness as political because of its constituent aspects towards “social inheritance”. It is therefore a base for eminently pertinent creation. When one gives the art object meaning, it has a propensity of becoming more of a subject, than an art object. Artistic content is the sole condition for this form of art to resist vulgarisation.
My objective was to gather talented artists around a proposal as respectful as possible towards the expression of their singularity. This is how I created the “two focal” technical grid that generated AWS, not as a finished product but rather as an artistic creation in expansion, an adaptable geometrical mural work of art.
The artists were invited to create a pictorial expression (serigraphy) to be multiplied on an adhesive base, capable of being cut out. These serigraphy sticker patterns are to be stuck on a wall inside a certain configuration taking into account the indications of the artist and author. The size of each AWS varies between 6 to 15 square meters. The artist may propose a border underlining repetition and the multiplication of signs inside the work of art, therefore evidently exacerbating the meaning while referring to wallpaper. However Art Wall Sticker, does not deploy itself inside the soporific repetitive “being pretty” register. On the contrary, the impertinence of its eventual prettiness is only an excuse implying that order or disorder are not the fruit of random harmony, but rather the principle motivation emerging on a precise moment X, from the depth of each one of the artists’ creations.
The pattern can therefore be scanned regularly or at random on a wall, each interval becoming the necessary pause for the repetition. The artist gives more or less precise instructions. The collector must play the roles of the project manager for the configuration, and interpreter of the score of his original pattern. Within this relationship of trust, and direct exchange from the artist to the collector, the level of experimentation that he encourages, is what gives beauty to the project. The strength of each AWS project is its possibility to be multiplied into a great number of original artworks inside the spaces where it can be installed. Thus modifying itself into many original pieces according to the sensibility of each collector it is the encounter of the artist’s original thought, accessible to any buyer and applicable to his private space. It is food for thought directly applicable to a living space in the sense that it was not previously filtered by the codes of the merchant artistic system (The AWS kits can be ordered, directly on Internet or by postal order).
For this first selection I placed myself in the position of a collector and chose twenty artists, not simply to create a group, a family of thought or a thematic reunion, but rather to show a range of generations, forms and attitudes. This selection of French artists, pioneers of Art Wall Sticker, constitutes the prelude of future international collections. I am deeply grateful for the proposals that the artists gave to AWS, striking with singularity as well as divers.
Lastly, without Mehdi Besrour, his sense of business and knowledge in contemporary creation, I would be unable to share the artistic jubilation with future AWS collectors… like you, who perhaps already are…

Gilles Touyard, Conceptor and Artistic Director of Art Wall Sticker.

An AWS kit is delivered including the stickers in sufficient number for composing the artwork inside 15m2. A border if the artist proposes one, a Catalogue presenting the AWS collection, the artist’s advice for the installation of the art piece, a small ruler for measuring the proportional spacing between the stickers, a label with the name of the art work and an authenticity certificate including the signature of the artist. The texts are presented in French and in English.