Bruno Ulmer

You could say that my artistic practice is based only on an idea, or better, on a feeling: that of the absence, of what has existed, lived and of which only a trace remains, a half-erased memory. No sterile nostalgia, rather a tenderness for the vanity of things that surround us and overwhelm us.

I am in the Metro, Paris, one evening like any other, routine, crowded. On the quay, workers are at work, they dismantle the metal walls that cover the walls of the station. Absolute amazement, under these walls, it is a treasure of memory that can be discovered. Large format images - 4 X 3 m - glued directly to the white subway tiles! A wave that carries me away, literally propels me into the past. 

We are in the 90s, but what I see, what aspires me, are images from the 60s, traces blackened with dust, posters from another time. It all comes back suddenly. Advertising images, snapshots of the “happiness" years, of “modern" life, advertisements and simplistic slogans… Everything comes back to me from childhood… Impossible to imagine for a second that these posters, almost frozen by the years, do not disappear after all. new.

The trail is mine, I make it mine and without even thinking about it, frantically I tear off all I can from the tattered posters. Hands bleeding, I pull, I force, the posters in pieces fall at my feet. With each torn piece, a new image appears. I want to breathe new life into, breathe new life into these traces that the eyes of security guards, workers, passers-by on the quay consider to be rubbish, waste ... A treasure for me, a mine of images to work on ...