The Stampographer

Livre publié en 2017 chez Siglio Press, éditeur indépendant basé à New York. Comme tout bon livre d’art qui se respecte, il est presque muet, il a de grandes marges blanches qui font mal aux yeux si on le lit à la plage, et il est en partie imbitable. Mais il présente luxueusement en 108 pages couleur les dernières recherches tampographiques issues de mon atelier de la rue du Repos, et tente d’expliquer comment j’en suis venu à faire des tampons alors qu’une belle carrière d’illustrateur de presse alcoolique se présentait à moi. A noter que ce livre est en anglais.

Texte de présentation ci-dessous (texte qui n'est pas de moi, je parle très mal anglais):

The Stampographer traverses the fantastic, anarchic imagination of Parisian artist Vincent Sardon (born 1970), whose dark, combative sense of humor is infused with Dadaist subversion and Pataphysical play.
Using rubber stamps he designs and manufactures himself, Sardon commandeers a medium often associated with petty and idiotic displays of bureaucratic power, then uses those stamps not to assert authority, but to refuse it. He scours the Parisian landscape as well as the world at large, skewering the power-hungry and the pretentious, reveling in the vulgar and profane.

In The Stampographer, there are insults in multiple languages, sadomasochistic Christmas ornaments, and a miniature Kamasutra with an auto-erotic Jesus. Sardon also wields the stamp as satirical device, deconstructing Warhol portraits into primary colors, turning ink blots into Pollock paint drips, and clarifying just what Yves Klein did with women's bodies. Yet Sardon’s razor-sharp wit is tinged with the irony of his exquisite sense of beauty. The stamps are rarely static—they have an animating magic, whether boxers are punching faces out of place or dragonflies seemingly hover over the page.

Sardon’s work is provocative in its subject matter as well as in its process and dissemination: he not only stands defiantly outside the art world’s modes of commerce but his artworks (the rubber stamps themselves) are actually the means with which anyone can make a work of their own. The Stampographer introduces English-speaking readers to one of the most unusual and original voices in contemporary French culture.

108 Pages
Hardcover
7.75x10,5 in.