At first, I chose the decorative arts as a field of debut for my work; this field of action was neither decorative setting, ornemental or decorative arts, but rather a transverse dimension that could interrogate these borders without limits.
This kind of contravened art form that I liked to look at from a very critical point of vu appeared to me for a while, like a possible dissidence from the different order and codes established. I then put in place a strategic method of disobedience, attacking diverse platforms like wallpainting, wall papering, friezes, designs, patterns and household objects (demonstrating a satisfactory or mediocre taste).
I held a very close interest for all handcrafted things, traditional craft industries, regarding them as importantly as the latest technological industries, just the same as abstract theories revolving around the inconscious optical or around conceptual art. Naturally I continued to refuse these levelling of low-high cultures. I approached my art and my objects of art through a DJ position = OB-J, containing diverse bills, the comings and goings and the reinstatement of History, Art and my own art. I always evolve amongst the different elements that surround me, that could be considered common, trivial, unappealing or crude. I undertake my work by sampling and I carry out startling eye vandalism. I rekindle these activities, question their integrity, place and value.
My tool sets and my means of production could be resumed to an obsessional or occasional collection, storage, sampling, contamination, proliferation, deconstruction (cut), reversal, scratching, contradiction and displacements. The pieces then created contained more often than not the object without it necessarily being a sculpture, sometimes representing a painting, without paint but built around the same issues, and it wasn?t really a question of placements or structures either. It would be a vague field, without any real possibility of asserting different models or direct affiliations and even less possibilities of asserting progress.
Under this partially iconoclast position, I came to the conclusion that this ?decorative? art form had an alibi function. It was for me a way of preserving under any circumstances all the different layers of vues and comprehension that I came to understand. It was a way to undermine the different looks, appearances and aspects all the while assuming the possible artistic, poetic and symbolic range of certain pieces. All in all it is the pieces?s social inscription that is important to me, the exposure of certain values that profit to minorities, all types and forms of exclusions or exceptions. I make it a point of decoding certain signs that are being used. I reflect, for example, on the masculine relationships that exists rather than the feminine ones; I cover issues ranging from martial, to textile, to training and I always look back upon my journeys. I therefore have a very varied range of production but also a very ordered and disciplined one.
I often interact with specialists, from diverse areas. Through reports and different analysis, I try to lift the silence or try to reveal the secrets, troubled zones, or the different errors of interpretation made. I exploit the different incoherences. I make all sorts of corrections, retouches and readjustments on the real position of elements. I would like to make what is unwatchable, something pleasant to look at, or make it possible to look at something that is not looked upon anymore due to visual habit. I create works of embellishment of horror, I recover the different layers of suffering turning it beauty.
I also have two other set of tools: timing and humor used for my titles. Mostly preoccupied by my research of meaning and truthfulness, I attack this necessity of creating different fabrics of fiction around a work of art, I usually tend to defictionnalise reality.
Chantal Raguet