Transforming Everyday Objects

By Nasim Yazdani

Artwork:
Jean-Luc Moulène
“Fixed Standard” (Paris, 2017)
Plastic Chair, Cardboard, Wood, Bolts, Screws, Nails and Washers
Dimensions: 31 1/2 × 17 × 21″ (80 × 43.2 × 53.3 cm)

Artists’ course of professional life is usually formed by a number of factors including their identity, the places they live in or they travel to, culture, current social issues, and the contingencies of their time. They benefit from different materials to express their inner self. Many artists transform everyday objects to create new forms and question the conventional definitions limiting minds. Jean-Luc Moulène, for instance, makes controversial montage works using ordinary objects such as plastic chairs to depict and satisfy his traumatic and, at the same time, invigorating imagination rooted in his identity. One of his recent creations, called “Fixed Standard”, which is basically a transformed chair, will be studied as an example of his extraordinary art.

Jean-Luc, who was born in 1955 and studied Aesthetics and Science of Art at the Sorbonne University in Paris, made “Fixed Standard” in 2017. The artwork, the dimensions of which are 31 1/2 × 17 × 21″, has been created by invading a plastic chair with cardboard, wood, bolts, screws, nails, and washers in order to make the conflict between conventional standards and human imagination visible.

The work is in fact shaped by a continuous dialogue between his imagination and the violation and negation of a common object to question the cliché meanings attributed to it. By doing so he tries to develop new forms of knowledge. Indeed, his collection of shapeshifting sculptures is supposed to show the constant contradiction between his identity and society.

He cannot imagine a chair without transforming its predetermined specifications and turning it into something new, the features of which are totally unknown and can be explored and speculated. “Fixed Standard” perfectly illustrates how the human being let appointed functions restrict their power of intuition and imagination.

References:
• “Fixed Standard” by Jean-Luc Moulène, 2017, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• ” Jean-Luc Moulène Selected Texts and Artworks”, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York

Jean-Luc Moulène

Fixed Standard by Jean-Luc Moulène

Jean-Luc Moulène

Fixed Standard by Jean-Luc Moulène