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INDUCING SETTING ACTIVITY Georges Meurant
I experiment with a spatial tension mode, usually with oil
on wood, implementing all factors making up the pictorial
scope: figural induction achieves – discontinuous yet seeming
inexhaustible – transmutation of perceptive space by –
unpredictable – chains of aggregations and disintegrations of
whole sets of shapes according to a reattribution dynamics of
rectangular figures outlines highly coloured with flat tints. As
they coincide, get mixed up or superimposed, contrasts and
outlines challenge one another on shape edges, thus enabling
me to dissociate shapes from their outlines to reallocate said
shapes to other shapes or groups of shapes within the virtual
grid made up of the outlines of figures as a whole. Each figure
can vanish to let a series of subsets take shape. Each one would
either work as a conveyor or, on the contrary, as a breaker.
Continuity and similarities allow for symmetries, completing
and regularities. Stops force changes of processes, balanced
out by alignments. Calls for redistributions occur through tints,
saturations, values or through their combinations but also
through stretches, similar directions and other interactions.
Horizontal compositions required two colour charts – one for
ceilings, the other for carpeting. Contractors allowed me twenty
tones. They allowed me seventy-two per colour chart provided
the surfaces covered by each colour were equal; a requirement
I turned down. I limited myself to sixty-two for ceilings and
sixty for carpeting. 7,550 m2 ceilings in felt slabs tinted into the succeed one another in some corridors. The contractor allowed
mass have been distributed throughout eleven floors of rooms
and halls and 1,000 m2 merinos carpeting fitted in four halls.
A radical grid, chosen for cell mats whose dimensions match
the figures/colours making them up, though distorted by two
stretched curves and two weak diagonals interacting like simple
rectangles, stands opposite the orthogonal grid built up by the
juxtaposition of ceilings square slabs.
I went over to the Filzfabrik factory in Fulda, where wool felts
were to be produced and tinted, together with an engineer
from the general building company and two managers from
the Dutch factory chosen for cutting felts into 60 cm square
units and their layout so as to assemble them in the rooms
according to my plans, which will transcribe my compositions
in as many numbered grids distributing tones numbered from
one to sixty-two. After visiting the factory with its director and
discussing with the colour etcher, I was presented with trendy
colours plus all those listed since the company was created in
the mid-19th century. Five of them were specifically created
for my colour chart. By means of an endoscope, I could move
about the various stages of a model filled with photocopies of
my ceilings. A third company will finally embed the slabs. From
the point of view of implemented slightly acidic range and of
the volumes its combinatorics magnify in the rooms or the
passageways it decongests through labyrinthine lower halls
with their low ceilings, I am satisfied with my harmonisation and
contrast efforts, visible in real size in final lights. Perceived from
close-up without really having to raise one’s head, the density
of felts reflects rich tints whose effect over the rooms is to be
felt wholly 1.
The creation of the colour chart for polychromic New
Zealander merinos carpets caused more problems than that for
ceilings. I only had one interlocutor, Albert Daubechies 2, who
is an agent from a Turkish company producing semi-industrial
carpets. It was hard for me to find what I needed in the range
I was offered. With difficulty, I obtained for a few tones closer
to those for the ceilings to be created. Production times were
particularly long and the colour chart was purchased in August
2014.
Over a thousand doors present printed settings by Abet
Laminati in Brescia. Seven formats were planned in my contract
but there were fourteen in the end. Forty coloured doors
twenty snaps so I managed to elaborate twenty-two drawings,
in the 1/1 scale and in 300 dpi, i.e. six predominantly red ones,
six predominantly green ones and ten polychromic ones. Eight
of those compositions printed on 305 x 130 cm stratified sheets
allowed for one, two or three cuttings. Fourteen compositions
printed on 225 x 100 cm formats were planned for three, four,
five, six or seven cuttings. Various positioning of the cuttings
within the printed surfaces will hide repetitions of a same
pattern on the same floor from visitors. Cutting lines will be
different colours so as to avoid mistakes. They will be drawn
in the narrow white zone on both sides of the composition in
order to place the print over the door correctly. It had to be
avoided for them to be beside the limit between two shades.
Four-colour process printing is a major problem reproducing
my work causes. Even in slight proportion and even by mixing
them together, it excludes black. Printing compromises one
of the three tone moderation or exaltation modes of my work,
that of saturation which regulate the quantity of pigment
concentrates to produce said colour – four-colour process