French artist Ivan Gros
creates serial prints on zinc plates
inspired by his life in Taiwan and France.
How does he perceive Taiwan?
In an age where anyone can
snap photos with their cell phones,
why bother with drawing?
I started drawing early in my life,
while I was still a student.
Perhaps even earlier…
I’ve been drawing since I was little.
I started with life drawing techniques,
and very quickly started to draw what I saw in cities.
That’s why visual arts like drawing and sketching
are really important to me.
Sketches can capture the essence of things,
and effectively transposes my observations
of surrounding directly onto paper.
This is very important:
it’s an exercise in careful observation
and it helps me to hone my drawing skills.
My spirit senses my reality
and transforms my perceptions.
That’s why even though
sketching is an ancient technique,
it’s still better than a cell phone camera.
While cell phones can only capture what we see,
I can erase or modify an image,
to present my personal interpretation of reality.
For example,
I can ignore the cars sitting in front of the temple.
Plus, sketching is subtler than photography.
When I sketch people,
they don’t feel like I’m intruding.
On the contrary,
they’re rather curious to see what I am doing.
If I were to go to a hot spring resort,
and observe naked patrons in the bath,
it’d be highly inappropriate to take out a cell phone
and photograph them at such a private moment
but sketching does not pose the same problem.
My habit of drawing every day
started when one year,
every day
for 365 days,
I did a sketch
and shared it with friends on my blog.
I also added a brief commentary.
Of course, I chose subjects which best reflected
unique aspects Taiwanese culture.
I used a very stripped down approach
to share my impressions of Taiwan
with my friends
I wanted to give them a glimpse of my daily routine
and my life in Taiwan.
How does sketching relate to print making?
Sketched lines work well on printing plates.
Sometimes my rough sketches are a little messy.
They’re not necessarily meant for public viewing.
If I want a certain sketch to stand on its own
and to connect with the audience,
I think it’s best
to convert them into block prints.
Sometimes I do both.
I start by applying a thin layer of
lacquer on a metal plate.
I engrave my design
on the top of the plate.
I then wipe off the lacquer from the design
and submerge the plate in an acid bath.
The acid dissolves the indented marks.
After cleaning the plate,
I apply the ink which fills in the crevices.
I load the plate onto the press
and print the image on paper.
This is wood block printing.
As a foreigner in Taiwan,
I notice things that are
sometimes overlooked by the Taiwanese.
They may take their surroundings for granted,
but its these little details which truly pique my interest.
They rouse my curiosity.
I became interested in excavators
around 2010.
That was the year
the government decided to
demolish many older buildings
in order to host the World Flora Festival.
It was a large scale demolition project.
Taipei was not only in full bloom
but it was also covered in excavators.
I confused the pronunciation of
‘excavator arm’ with ‘ghost arm.’
For me, it seemed that
these excavators had a rather ghostly appeal.
The excavator arm seemed almost possessed.
I decided to call it the “phantom’s arm”.
Also,
something else confused me.
I had another misconnection.
The excavators were made by
Komatsu a Japanese company.
The name Komatsu made me think of the deity Mazu.
All the excavators became “Mazu’s arm!”
I started to draw a little girl inside the arm’s bucket
and transformed her into Mazu.
I didn’t want to use my drawings of excavators
to condemn the demolition projects;
that certainly wasn’t the point.
However, I felt this project was sacred,
not in terms of religion,
but in terms of Roger Caillois’s definition.
He defines sacred as that
which gives and takes away life.
The phantom arm fit that description:
it can destroy,
and paradoxically it can also create.
In our society, perpetual destruction
and the need for construction
complement each other.
This cycle of destruction and building
is what keeps the world in balance.
