Pierre Louis Nozières is a 26-year-old artist currently residing in the southern region of France. Having grown up in that very place, he experienced the scorching Mediterranean sun and the relentless Mistral winds, which plagued him with discomfort amidst the sweet fragrance of lavender. Contrary to the idealized portrayal of Provence in Jacquemus fashion shows, Pierre recalls that life in the region was far from idyllic.
His fondest memories revolve around the annual theatre festival hosted by the nearby city of Avignon.
Pierre developed an affinity for the multitude of promotional posters that adorned every surface of the town during summer. Once the final curtain fell, the city transformed into a graveyard of torn papers, drifting and bouncing in the sweltering air. Collisions between ripped pamphlets created random compositions of text, faces, and gazes, giving the streets an artistic yet chaotic appearance. Despite the aftermath, everyone knew that the city had survived yet another siege and would endure the next one in the coming year.
It was within this chaos that Pierre discovered the beauty that ignited his interest in paper cutting. He began tearing apart his parents’ magazines, remnants of tapestries, and even his textbooks. Surprisingly, within these fragments, he found a deeper understanding of the world he had been thrust into.
Although Pierre continues to pursue his art of cutting paper, those days are now behind him. His love for the streets of Avignon at the end of summer remains, albeit slightly diminished.
What did you study and where ?
After a scientific course in high school, I headed in 2015 to study physiotherapy in Marseille, South of France. It was a more conventional course that was reassuring everyone, including me.
Then, I quickly understood that what I appreciated was life as a student, but not what I was studying for. So I just waited until graduation to do something that made sense to me. But in a certain way, studying physiotherapy helped me in my creation. Indeed, I used to learn the way in which human bodies are constituted by studying their anatomy, and more of all, the way it moves in space. And now, I feel more confident with giving movement to the paper I use when I create; I like to see it drives like it was alive as if imposing a fold, a curve, or a twist on it was counteracting the initial immobility of paper to offer it the freedom granted by motion.
Did you enter the creative industry by accident or was it planned ?
I think it was a planned accident. I recently found one of them, dated 2002; I was 6. Curiously, it looks like a lot of what I’m doing at the present time, and I don’t really know if it’s a good sign actually…! But an artistic career was not really an option, and I didn’t even think about it because my conscious mind absorbed it as something that couldn’t be a professional option.
But after graduating, my attraction to the art world became bigger and bigger. I began to create a lot, every evening, in my free time. Like if something was telling me that I had to persevere in that way which was in line with whom I really am. So that’s when I started to see my artistic occupation as something that had to become my profession.
So that’s why I said, a planned accident. I think it was just a fight between my conscious and unconscious mind. The battle was tight but the second one won. And that’s maybe the best thing that happened to me.
Today, I do not regret my scientific experience. Even if I’m happy to depart from it, I see it more like a gain of experience rather than a waste of time, as some people continue to say.
Why did you choose to tap your creative side through collage ?
Sometimes when you encounter something difficult to understand, you have to get closer to what your mind is able to comprehend.
So, when I was a child, I remember having difficulties «reading» parts of the world that surrounded me that I had been thrown into. For a long time, I used to feel out of place.
When you do collage, you begin with something that already exists, like an ad from a magazine, or an old postcard… You learn that you don’t create everything from A to Z, it’s like reworking something from a pre-existing form. To create something in college, I extract the element that interests me, and then I put it in another place, make it live in another scene, surrounded by other people, with another message to share. That’s why this medium is an ideal way for me to translate different themes, explore them differently, and make them more readable by my senses.
For my next exhibition, I approach Catholic representations in art. Caution, there is not any judgment about ideological values here, and I am not questioning anyone’s beliefs through my works. I’m just trying to be more confident with a subject I’ve always had trouble dealing with. In fact, as a child, I have been strongly struck by a very realistic representation of crucifixion in a church. The second after having a look at it, I fell on the floor and just rejected to enter (according to my mother, I was too young to remember). From that day, I just could no longer visit a church in a calm and serene way, and it’s as if I was scared to be assailed by all these representations, showing distressing scenes to me. That’s why I’m dealing with it in my current series. I actually bend over the subject, approach it and seek to interpret it in my own way. This work has something really therapeutic, because it feels like approaching this topic is a way to be less passive towards these paintings or sculptures, and to maybe interact with them in a different way.
That’s why collage is, personally, the best medium to express what I want to share; remove something from reality, then mix it with yours, and finally, propose another one.
The fact that I love working with paper was really important too. All these things make me so close to college making.
I read that you like your art to evoke something to the viewer, and that you have environmental issues close to your heart. What do you aim to evoke in people ?
I see in my creative process something really near to the functioning of a production line; the raw material, its transformation and then, the object produced, but also the remnants generated during the process.
According to the production-driven logic, what’s important is the object produced, and it is granted all the values at the end of the process, whereas most of the time, production scraps are not taken into account. That’s why I query this logic through my artworks, by pushing the final object into the background and assigning the value to the remnants that have been generated during its production.
As such, shreds of paper, that remain on the floor of my studio at the end of my work, carry a message much more important than the finished poster. As if a particular value was given to production remnants, and that their importance in the process took precedence over the final object created. In this way, we take another look at all these scraps, we reconsider them, and we no longer consider them as something cumbersome, but as a material that offers many new possibilities.
Thus, to understand the message I want to share, the viewer has to change his vision, and not wait too much for the final artwork I can propose to him, because what is essential stands in what induced its creation, namely, the remnants.
Or what I usually call relics.
This is also why the theme of the relic is crucial in my creation. It means that interest can only be given to a fragment of what the person or the object may have been at the beginning. And all the faith, and therefore all the importance go to these pieces of the past.
Why are environmental issues close to your heart, was there an experience that really stuck with you ?
Per se, I think that’s not something in particular which raises my awareness about environmental issues. I think that’s an addition of many things, and most of all, an addition of memories.
Indeed, I grew up between the city and the countryside. For the holidays, I used to be immersed in a world at odds with what was known during the rest of the year; fields everywhere, proximity to the woods and the river, surrounded by animals… That was something like a dream, the perfect place to grow up.
But now, when I come back there, I’m witness to the impact of climate change. Even if memories are known to be finer than they really were, I can not recognize the place where I spend so much good time. Before, it was like a daydream for me as a child. And now, it’s something like dry streams in summer, sun-scorched pastures, months of May that you endure as if you were in the middle of July … And all of this came so quickly. So many changes in the last decade, how can it be possible?
That’s why my artwork revolves around these questions; I’m not pretending to give the answer to the problem, but I try to not remain only in the observation of the problem.
Is there someone that influence you ? If so, who, and why ?
I’m someone very curious by nature, and I’m sure that many things influence me. May be too many, by the way. But it’s hard to think about it and to try to make it a conscious thing. But if I had to, I will say something that way; I like anything that says a lot in confined-tiny spaces, even if it means saying too much, that’s okay, we’ll be silent when we are dead.
I like when it’s all a little too much, too colourful, too busy; that is surely the proximity to the chaos reigning in Marseille that does that.
When it is too much, you have to squeeze, compact, take yourself for César, reconquer the space, and that’s exciting.
When you want to say a lot, you use as many pieces of paper as Proust would have used words.
And then, when it’s overflowing with characters, you think it’s a good sign, the room is full. And then, Michelangelo did it too, right?
And then if it’s really too much, always count on the Mistral; a burst and we forget everything.
Then we start again.
Can you please extend on this statement : « PLN uses attractiveness of fashion magazine not any more to attract and seduce, but to challenge and make people think » ?
Through my collages, pictures are no longer selling anything. They go from individual to drowned in a mass, and they lose their original meaning to defend something else.
Thus, all the marketing stratagems put in place by advertisers to sell their products serve me to provide the attention of the viewer, but to convey my own message.
Moreover, I often represent crowds, and the identity of the brand, which shines through the model who represents it, allows me to make these concentrations of people less anonymous, and more singular; my aim is to group many individualities in the same place, which all have something to tell us.
Lastly, all these magazines represent a source of inspiration for me. It is my raw material. And as a painter would choose his brushes and paints, as a sculptress would choose the stone she would carve, I chose magazines for the characters of the story I want to tell.
Walk us through your step by step process of creating your collage art, and more precisely, Reliques de Balios.
Each artwork I make has its own creative process. For Reliques de Balios, it was a real challenge because I wanted to create a three-dimensional horse, and it took me about three years to completely finish it. That’s why I feel like a very special relationship with it because we spend so much time together.
So, concerning the making process, I first started to sketch the pattern of the horse, by taking approximately the measurements I was thinking about. It was really the most technical part, and I’m pretty sure that the skills that I got from my late cabinetmaker grandfather helped me a lot. So thank you to him.
Then, I put every part of the structure together to get something in 3 dimensions. Once I had the skeleton of my horse, I covered it with a first layer of newsprint, from the hooves to the top of the head. So at that time, I had a horse with its skeleton, covered by a newspaper dermis, but the epidermis was missing.
Hastily, but surely influenced by my scientific course, I made the skin of my horse like a mosaic of cells, all designed in the form of a triangle, which is a geometric
form that was obsessing me, like a symbol of stability and balance. At that time, I used human faces to cover it because I thought it would be a questioning thing to see an animal being dressed as a human being. It was quite innocent, but it was something like ten years ago.
But the work didn’t end there. Indeed, during the process, I kept in a large box, each of the cardboard or paper remnants that I cut but didn’t use. I had to do something with all of them, because, according to me, they were so important in what they said about the artistic process and with the strong message they deliver.
It was from there that I began to develop the concept of relics. For Balios, I chose this showcase that I recovered for it to be adapted to its new role. I then collected all the relics, and I arranged them in this glass structure, which became at that moment, the only keeper of the message and the memory of that artwork. Because Balios will not cross the time, that’s just paper. But its relics will do it. I then sealed it, and like any reliquary, I affixed a wax seal to attest to its authenticity and veracity. Thus, it is this part of the work which has all the value, because it’s the one that owns the message to be transmitted, through which I try to divert the attention from the object produced, in favour of what the production of this object has induced.
Would you ever considered Digital integration in the making of your collages ?
Yes, that’s a way that I’ve already tried to explore some time ago.
For a series, I used photo editing software to mix pictures coming from totally different areas. In this way, I could confront these two completely opposite worlds, through their singular point of view, issues and specific problems. It was an experimental work, but I thought it was interesting to try to blend these two visions together. This series questions the very principle of celebrity, with personalities from different backgrounds, immersed in an environment where their fame no longer represents anything, and where the myth around them collapses to expose them as they really are.
Where do you think technology intersects with Art, and do you see potential in it ?
For me, the technological tool opens up huge possibilities in many areas and even in art. It’s a good way to push the boundaries to explore new modes of expression.
That’s pretty exciting to see an AI doing a painting which can be sold for something like a half million dollars by a prestigious auction house. But on the other hand, it can be scary. Possibilities are so great that in return, the possible drifts are huge. It also questions the artist’s legitimacy, and what’s really important in art. Should technology remain a tool, or can it claim artist status? That’s an interesting question, and maybe I think that we don’t have enough perspective to give it an answer right now.
Words by Pierre Nozieres
Interviewed by Fernanda Founder of GLITCH
Edited by GLITCH Team
