BIO
Paris, 1978Influenced in equal measures by classical 20th century artists such as Modigliani and Léger, as by the Moroccan art of Zellige, (a form of highly decorative enameled terra cotta), Remed’s work has a unique, immediately recognizable quality in both its micro and macro manifestations. Working at the conjunction of mathematics and calligraphy, seeking a harmonic purity combined with the flow, the energy of the line, Remed seeks to find truth through simplicity, to find a universal language of form and colour.
Although now based in Madrid, Remed grew up in Lille. He firstly integrate after school art-classes and later to a college of the applied arts (where he studied “space-communication”), Remed was destined for a career in graphic design before a friend with whom he was studying introduced him to graffiti. Two years on, and six months spent steadily decaying in front of a computer at a design agency, he quit his job after gaining an opportunity to work independently, teaching graffiti to children at various schools and social institutions (a role which can be seen to have come to a climax with his work at the Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York in 2011). Whilst Remed began to learn more about the history of the urban arts through this work, it was a chance meeting with the Algerian artist Mahjoub Ben Bella which became the first real turning point in his artistic journey: As a first encounter with an artist who was living his life through the purity of his work, through a work unsullied by any commercial influence or even interest, Ben Bella gave Remed the belief to embrace his own ability, he thus starting to concentrate more seriously on his artistic work from this point on.
By the time he moved to Sao Paulo in 2006, Remed’s artistic style had begun to shape into a form we can now clearly recognize. Starting to produce more large scale murals, and developing a highly cosmological, highly spiritual visual language of his own, his work began to use a more heightened illustrative simplicity whilst at the same time developing a more keen complex narrativity. Whilst the Moroccan influence took hold through the fusion of geometric and calligraphic elements then (his figures almost disappearing within the vivid colours and flat patterning he had created), the intricate stories he wove into each of his images came to function almost like religious parables or folk legends, a densely embedded significance often overlooked through due to their decorative beauty. Becoming equally obsessed with the relationship between mathematics and aesthetics, with the intertwined harmony of the world around him, Remed’s work can thus be seen to have become steeped in the balance and contrasts so prevalent within Islamic Art, a visual regime in which all parts of the image were involved in a search for synchrony, where nothing was left to chance. Yet while his aesthetic experimentations were emerging from a very personal space (his urge to paint functioning akin to a “diary, a notebook of inventions, or philosophical essay”), so to they were attempting to transcend the self in an attempt to reach others: Attempting to form a shared dialect, a language able to traverse social and cultural values through the founding of an almost primordial visual regime, Remed was attempting to communicate the classic themes and dualities of existence – life and death, illness and health, good and evil – working between figuration and abstraction so as to find a shared ground with those who were around him.
Since returning to Madrid where he has now settled, Remed’s work has continued to refine, developing into what is now an inimitable style. Whilst producing ever increasing series of paintings inside then, Remed has still kept up a strong presence in the urban environment, tagging, albeit in a now highly experimental manner, inscribing philosophical calligraphic messages (often in chalk) onto city walls, etching into metal, as well as both pasting and painting his more complex designs throughout the city. For Remed, all of these activities are as important as the other, each an opportunity for performative release as much as communal exchange, each a chance to rhyme with colour and form, an occasion for both experimentation and communication. For him, art is simply understood as a way of healing the soul, of curing the mind, as a form of very public, outward therapy. It is a the blend of science and soul, a way to cope with pain and happiness, love and hate, light and darkness, a remedy for life itself.
INTERVIEW
How would you define the project that you undertook for TruckArtProject?
Sincere.
In your case, how do the two sides of the truck work together?
Both of them make a poem that is completed.
What are the challenges of the project for you?
To create harmony. To Have little time to feel and say something relevant and open in an evolutionary context.
How does this project fit into your trajectory and your discourse?
It is one more artjob. An empty canvas that was filled. A materialized intention. Part of the way. A memory. A posibility.
Some artists admit that they came in with a pre-existing idea that they had to modify, or that grew in other directions when faced with a canvas like this one. Was that the case for you?
I arrived with no idea. I did not know whether to do something figurative or written. Whether to use contours or not, flat or blurred ... I waited to be in front of the surface to perceive and choose. As the context was unstable, because I knew that the work was going to move and change the location all the time, I did not manage to get a reference or a guide to start creating. I only had the proportions of the moving canvas. I also remembered some trucks that I painted years ago and the pleasure of making wide gestures by drawing with spray. So I chose to write and play with my name, Remed, ("The Art as Remedy") for pure pleasure and as a tribute to the thousands of trucks painted by graffiti artists for almost 50 years.
I picked up a piece of paper and started to look for some new letters adapted to the proportion of the canvas until I found them. Then I had to complete the right side of this side so I played with sounds until I found a seven word poem of three lines. I looked for a way to write in a similar way to the title but more calligraphic. I did some tests with the spray on paper before painting the first letter on the truck. Each one of them is ornamented parting from a mechanical base, an «L» repeated to its left. If it is omitted, the poem appears in an evident way.
This side says:
"REMED (IO)
El Arte, Parto.
Sincero Acto.
Eterno Pacto."
“REMED (IO)
The Art, Birth.
Sincere Act.
Eternal Pact.”
On the other side I repeated the same process. Find a word guide and another short poem. I decided to use the same colors, primary shades, black and white. In contrast to the other side, the background is dark and the letters have light:
"MIRAR
Arte Remedio.
Atar el Miedo.
Amar el Hecho.”
“LOOK
Remedy Art
Tie the Fear
Love the Fact”
How did you approach the reception of a work like this, in which the spectator comes across it instead of seeking it out, and which doesn’t “circulate” through the usual art channels?
This dimension of the job is something that I really like. I see it as generous. It's like an honest mural, a conscious graffiti or a flower that grows in the cement. It's a surprise, an alternative. It seeks nothing more than to be and perhaps expand the perception of their testimonies.
What about the fleeting nature with which it’s received?
I like the opportunity that it might not to be completely deciphered, the possibility of changing the viewer by the creator while he imagines perhaps another possible reality, another end to the job, another job.
How did you approach the scale? Were you used to it?
Yes.
What does this type of project offer you, and what do you think you bring to the project?
Participating in this project has allowed me to create for no other purpose than to experiment, to meet and share. I did not have the feeling of serving any purpose. I was able to create freely I hope I brought beauty. That was the primary intention.
Why is a project like TruckArtProject interesting?
A project that allows an artist to express himself without a specific purpose and offer the possibility to the viewer to create without realizing it is a gift for everybody. I am grateful to Ink and Movement, TruckArtProject and Fer Francés team for making this possible through their initiative.