Stéphane Mouflette

Stéphane Mouflette's work is the consequence of his way of being in the world, sensitive and offbeat. His productions today are the result of uninterrupted work initiated from childhood. His intuitive and humorous approach is based on a critique of his material environment. He uses and combines different manufacturing techniques to produce objects with an ambiguous status: sculpture, functional element, machine-object, model, contemplation tool, game ... or all at the same time.

Thus, Stéphane Mouflette's production is part of an approach similar to that of art brut which values ??a naive artistic production, which claims to be free from cultural references. "So art where the only function of the invention manifests itself, and not those, constant in cultural art, of the chameleon and the monkey. "(Jean Dubuffet, L’art brut preferred aux arts arts, 1949)

Stéphane Mouflette's daring constructions evoke this world of childhood, that of construction games where it was necessary to patiently assemble parts into kits for the final project to be revealed - extraordinary animals; improbable dwellings; means of transport from another time, past or future. This is the case of works such as Garniture or Old Disorder.

His object proposals meet the need to dream.

Stéphane Mouflette's dreamlike universe rocks the viewer into a timeless dimension. He takes pleasure in strolling through these miniature architectures, his eye wanders there in the hope of unraveling the mystery of their assembly, he lets himself be transported into another universe, that of the dream, of the imaginary. Her favorite objects are spaces of mental projection, open to everyone's intimate interpretation.

In this, his work is a vital practice, an "inner necessity" (Kandinsky), and the means by which he communicates with the outside world. His research responds to intimate concerns that extend to the universal.

His need to create is also an act of resistance, Stéphane Mouflette evades the question of beauty in his production and prefers to question hierarchies of all kinds, playing on apparent oppositions: from noble to ignoble, from precious to inexpensive, from microscopic to macroscopic.

For him the preciousness of Gold or the cheap quality of plastic to create, invent, is the same, he has no prior knowledge of the material. Whatever it is, it remains made up of protons, electron neutrons. The “Big Love” series presented by the Armel Soyer gallery in 2018 is an example of that. More than an aesthetic bias, the "Big Love" collection is inspired by the atomic architecture of materials and playfully plays with games of scale, blurring the limits of the rational, the visible and the invisible. The matter seems to mutate and the atoms tirelessly divide in a perpetual and rhythmic repetition which turns into an optical obsession. Cells multiply endlessly, transforming what was only the most invisible microscopic detail into the main plastic subject. Stéphane Mouflette's practice is resolutely contemporary and can be compared to designers like Studio Job, Misha Kahn or Marteen de Ceulaer

Although Stéphane Mouflette is close by his playful and childlike practice, to art brut, his work is based on a solid discourse of cultural references. It offers a critical rereading and a wacky interpretation of the history of art, of which works such as those in the series La chute des cours or the Servant on wheels testify. Both pro and anti design, his creations cast doubt on their "usefulness" and joke about the idea of ??"technical progress" in a society governed by innovation.

They are hyper-functional, borrow the formal vocabulary of the tech world, but seem to meet no essential need. His red thread admits a kind of regression on contrary to the concerns of the Designer for whom the question of use is central. By creating these “hyper-functional” objects in the manner of Swiss Army knives, Stéphane Mouflette echoes a utopia of design which tends to want to meet all of the user's needs in what could be described as debauchery of function . At the same time he questions the principle of modernism "form follows function" (Louis Sullivan) which banishes any principle of ornamentation in favor of a purity of function.

His work puts these two aspects in tension: the need to respond to usage and ornamentation with the aim of reconciliation, of cohabitation.

This criticism is reflected in his way of doing things, which mixes new digital tools and traditional know-how. Techno-positive, he is part of the utopian movement of "makers". A subculture that promotes the principle of self-production against the large battery of mass industry, makers practice hack, which is the creative diversion from the usual use of an object. Once again in the very act of creation, Stéphane Mouflette claims the absence of hierarchy in practices. He is a high-flying, limitless craftsman: he sculpts, saws, sews, forges, prints, designs digital models. He produces everything he imagines, everything he wants for him and in this sense, qualifies his productions as whims. The maker culture constitutes a dream period for creators: everything is possible, everything is achievable, in particular by using the 3D printer, Stéphane Mouflette's privileged tool.

Stéphane Mouflette, who holds a degree in wood working and an education in visual arts at the Sorbonne, embodies the figure of designer-creator. He is a free electron on the current design scene.

"Life is a theater that needs a set, and that’s what I strive to do, build a set for it.» Stéphane Mouflette