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French painter Laurent Muller will be exhibiting a series of ink paintings at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta entitled ‘Evanescence’, starting October 5. A series of neo-Baroque and abstract work will also be on display at the Wignacourt Museum, Rabat in an exhibit called ‘L’Amour, Desire and Knighthood memories’. Both exhibitions will run until October 29. Teodor Reljic visits his Valletta studio
During my chat with Laurent Muller, the word ‘interaction’ keeps popping up. Having graduated and worked in industrial design, Laurent eventually chose to dedicate himself fully to painting. He recognizes that in today’s world, the boundaries between the artforms are extremely blurry. “I was lucky to have a great teacher when I studied at the National School of Industrial Design in Paris, a course which took five years. The first lesson he taught us was that there would be million different ways to be a designer.” Being trained to work with wood, metal and plastic among other materials, Laurent eventually started painting on Plexiglas. “After I finished studying I got a job as a design manager and I was enjoying helping other designers find their way. Still, after I moved to and worked in New York, I found that art was appealing to me more and more.” He refers to a ten-year gap, a sort of rite-of-passage that most artists go through from the moment they graduate up to when “something blooms”. “That’s an interesting period because it helps you to determine what really touches you and why. There’s some work that I would never show but that’s still very important to me – more so than a beautiful piece, because I know that it’s a stepping-stone.”
The artist is short, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, with a gentle demeanor that suggests a quiet sort of confidence. On our way to his Valletta-based studio, I get assaulted by cabbages being loaded into the back of a garbage truck. He opens the doors to his atelier and kindly hands me some water and a bog roll to wipe the bits of squashed vegetable, which look curiously like that top bit of bananas.
He seems to have an assured sense of practicality in spite of his (seemingly very prolific) output and the diversity of his work – ranging from landscapes to neo-Baroque paintings to abstract Plexiglas work (“look at it, it’s like a mirror, you can see yourself in it, that’s the whole idea. I consider my work to be complete once the viewer can come in and interpret it”). I get a clearer image of his approach when he says that he still considers himself to be a designer: “Most research, even after you drop it, it comes back to you. From design, I learned to value the combination of responsibility and interaction and this has stuck with me.” He talks about how some recent work he’s done – namely commissioned pieces in glass for a Maltese family and work for a café-restaurant project in Valletta – that’s almost architectural in approach because “they’re large pieces that are almost like walls in themselves and this is quite indicative of the direction I want to head in right now. I think that if I had studied art as opposed to design, I’d probably have a background in abstract shapes and colours, but not objects. More and more, I see my paintings becoming objects. Some art you just buy to decorate the place, but other work can influence the whole atmosphere. I’d really love to work on walls and maybe even furniture…” The logical thing would be to move into murals, installations. But Laurent is taking his time about it. “I’m very optimistic and I know that the opportunity will come eventually. I think I’ve learnt to be more patient, which was a long process. I know that I have 50 years to get to where I want to be, even if I might change my mind along the way.” This is his way of dealing with the fast-paced world we’re living in. “Today we have all this reality TV, instant winning, instant career…and I don’t think you can really apply that to art. I mean you can become very successful if you design an interior that’s trendy, for example, and we all enjoy going to a great restaurant that serves good fusion cuisine, why not? But I don’t want to base my life on that. I know it has to be deeper. Maybe it’s a bit more intellectual, but it’s not bad to be intellectual sometimes.”
Laurent doesn’t want to follow the emerging architectural trend in art all the way through, mostly because it is a trend. However he still finds it an interesting subject to look at from a more anthropological point of view. “You think ‘OK, today I’m 30 years old, why are so many people my age interested in this?’ The reason is because everything interacts. I discovered this when I was starting to study design in Paris at 17. There would be these people who used to be doctors or dentists who went back to study at 35 because they wanted to change their lives...and it was mind-blowing for me, coming from my little ‘provence’…Now I’d meet up with a photographer friend of mine and we’d just discuss creativity, not in our own work but in general because there’s a greater symbiosis in art now, and that’s very exciting.” Laurent hopes that this shows up in his work, but he doesn’t want to rush it. “Basically I’m critical, but at the same time, I enjoy discovering new things. I think it’s important to be naïve up to a certain point.”
He first exhibited on the island last December at 88, Melita Street. Having lived here for three years, he finds Malta to be “an excellent base to work in, it should be an experimentation center that’s exploding with creativity. Yes, the politics are the politics, but artists need to start believing in this island and getting out there. If you want to put flowers out by your window, you don’t wait for the government to pay for your flowers or to give you permission, you just do it.”
The ink paintings on paper at the National Museum of Fine Arts will be abstract with a touch of Romanticism (“because some of them are evocative of Romantic landscapes”) while the exhibit at the Wignacourt Museum (which opened last Thursday) will be made up of neo-Baroque and abstract paintings, all of which are done on glass.
The artist invites anybody who’s interested in his work to his studio, to be found in 211, St. Ursula Street, Valletta.
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