Swiss artist Stéphane Ducret, fonder of ART CLASSE, talks about his latest body of work from the My Own Private Museum Series (https://www.stephaneducretstudio.com).

« I see my work as a psychological wandering through the art world, a questioning of how we are influenced by recurrence and by the art market driven by powerful figures. In this respect, My Own Private Museum Series is a perfect sequel to the Real Estate series, in which I appropriated leading contemporary artworks and placed them into the context of collectors’ homes:
The Internet, Google Images, artworks that have become icons… does it make any sense? »
« I am obsessed with painting and the contemporary history of painting. And I am obsessed with paint and the physicality of paint. »
« My choice of subjects reflects the state of my personality, my emotional situation at the time I paint them: they speak of the present moment and the importance of living it consciously. Another month, another year, I would have painted other works. »
« It's a bit like drawing a card from a tarot deck: Manzoni's artist's shit, Paul McCarthy’s severed head of Richard Bronson, and the eyes blinded by two metal bars, the entrails of Sterling Ruby’s ceramics, Louise Bourgeois’ portrait of the she-wolf made human… they all have to do with how I feel at the moment I paint those works. »
« Every detail has its importance, until details like pedestals of the sculptures I represent, the background of the painting I paint, and of course, the sculpture itself, like in this Frank West sculpture, the drippings, the splash of paint, the dirtiness. For me all of these parts have their own importance and I treat every part of my painting as equal. »
« For the artists’ portraits, such as Rudolf Stingel, or Josh Smith, I wanted to go beyond the representation of the artist and I wanted to invite into my paintings, representations of their works and also of their exhibitions. »
« For Marlène Dumas, I really wanted to bring into my work the same quality of paint into her work. »
« When I painted Sterling Ruby’s Bassin Theology, his ceramic, I was really in this kind of state of mind. I felt my entrails open. I really was suffering a lot and I think that I brought this into this painting. »
« Music is very important to me… its influence on my painting technique… »

https://www.stephaneducretstudio.com