A. Stella

Born in 1958 in Cyprus, lives and works in Saint-Étienne.
Represented by Galerie Schumm Braunstein, Paris.

Mechanics of perception

From the articulation of two elements, two notions, two complementary processes, which operate simultaneously, I create mechanisms of perception. For many years, my research based on this same phenomenon, deployed in the field of painting, continues today in the field of paper structure.

Draw a geometric element inside a rectangle.

Its internal / external delimitation produces the simultaneous appearance of a second element, inscribed in the surface of the rectangle and nested with the other. From the observation of this data, I create and define the Geogram: unit formed in a rectangle by the interweaving of two geometric elements, articulated in full / empty.

5 complementary units are retained, “primary forms” the geograms. These same geograms, materializing in the painting space, are transferred to the paper surface and form planograms, plane structures articulated by the fold / unfold.

What links the two fields of research is the problem of the surface. The actions carried out and the procedures used are different, yet having the same function: to transform the surface by introducing an articulation and to produce a mechanism of perception.

What we observe in these works is always a formation and the “how” of this leads us to the process that produces it. The planogram since its inception, 2002, is presented in its paper structure, "naked", in direct contact with the environment, wall, floor, space.

In 2015, it unfolds in a predefined space, a square white frame, thus establishing a new tension between its own training limits (height, width, depth) and those of the frame.

In the first part, the line planogram, centered in the continuity of the paper, engages the square in its verticality. The two complementary elements, which are at the edge of a line, give their extension a different formation. According to these extensions, the lines combine together in a space made up of verticality and horizontal interruption, play and thwart the limits between frame and planogram, continuing to reveal its mechanism by going back to its origin.

In 2016, the repeated planogram disappeared, giving way entirely to its extensions: strip articulated at 90 °, line folded at 180 ° and line at 270 ° silent folding.

Thus the planogram becomes pligram. The fold is the mechanism that transforms the surface of the paper, while the incision establishes perception.

Its flattening is done directly by a line with the cutter. The vertical, thus memorized in the fiber of the paper, meets the horizontal incision and causes an interruption, the articulated band is replaced by the folded or silent line.

Thus in this new distribution of the surface, the redistribution of perception of two complementary elements takes place between the lines and the intervals.

I think that the formation of memory, language, thought cannot be done without articulation of at least two relationships, processes, notions ... The articulations presence / absence, fold / unfold, are specific to this mental mechanism.

- A. Stella