In Conversation With: Jean-Vincent Simonet: b. 1991, France

GHK: You’ve maintained an artistic practice for some years now, but maybe we could start by talking about your younger years. Was it clear you’d end up doing something creative?

JVS: I had a pretty typical childhood. A normal family, a small village, nothing special. But I always remember being quite into graphics and images at different times of my life. Whether it was video games or skateboards – normal things teenagers are connected with – the most interesting thing for me was always the related visuals and graphics. It might have been typography, skateboard stickers, graffiti. I had a camcorder to document the skateboarding stuff, so there was a link to producing, too. This was also when computers were coming into houses, in the late nineties and early noughties; my parents weren’t into technology at all, but I asked for a computer and started cracking photoshop, playing around with those tools. I wasn’t really painting or drawing; I liked the technical stuff – creativity mixed with tools! I was also quite into science, but more for its aesthetics – stuff looks cool through a microscope, or if you mix some vinegar with bicarb! I guess it was for the vibes and visuals rather than the science itself!

GHK: And how did your arts education come about?

JVS: I was lucky! I received some excellent advice from various people to check out ECAL, an art school in Lausanne, Switzerland. I don’t know how it happened, because I had no artistic background or art historical framework, but I got in. From there, everything changed. When you arrive, you get those art historical classes, but ECAL is also quite particular in its own style, its own way of teaching. I was like a sponge! So I went a little further towards a more classical path into photography – learning photography techniques, graphic design, editing, videography etc.

GHK: Your most recent projects – which come together in The Keys to the Factory at The Ravestijn Gallery – all orbit a printing factory that’s been in your family for several generations. Before we discuss the work, what’s the story of this place?

JVS: Well, the factory was first run by my great grandfather. He was an only child, he married an Italian woman, they settled somewhere between Lyon and Grenoble. He was first working for a woman who owned the factory, but she eventually stopped and he took over. It was then passed down to my grandfather, whose three sons – my father and my uncles – now run it. It’s a whole family thing!

My father is an offset driver – he’s really the one printing. One of his brothers is manufacturing (folding, cutting etc.), and the youngest brother does the administration, taking care of clients for instance. Luckily, the business is still doing well, despite the decline of printing. They don’t print fancy books there – it’s stuff like catalogues, stickers, labels for packaging. Everyday printed material linked to industry or big distribution. It’s also a bit more relaxed now, but when I was a child my father was always there from 6 in the morning until 8 in the evening! It was very intense; life was all about work. They come from a very humble background, of workers from the field, so they all share these very strict working values. The factory is life for my father, and of course for my mother, even though she doesn’t go there. The place sets the rhythm for the whole day. That’s what I remember from childhood.

GHK: When you grow up around something, you can take it for granted; you might not think of it as a resource. So when did you realise the creative influence of the factory?

JVS: It went step by step. At the beginning, I was just using the factory as a place to print a dummy for a project, to try out a sequence of images or whatever. I was basically just printing things for free! Slowly, I started to think about trying to make something, I had an idea to do something around the mistakes in inkjet printing, so I was trying that out on some editorial fashion assignments, but it really wasn’t working! I was doing tests, trying to scan things, going there once every couple of months. 

At some point I started to make In Bloom, this project about Japan. Within In Bloom, one part features some of these inkjet prints on plastic – but it was very uncontrolled. That was the trigger. From there I explored and refined this technique, which led to some gallery shows of these works. I was going to the factory to produce prints for these shows, but it wasn’t yet as intense as Waterworks – a publication I made later – for which I really worked on site from early in the morning until late at night, a bit like my father! It was during the summer break, so I was alone. If I’m there with the staff, I try to stay as invisible as possible because I don’t want to interfere with their work. But in summer, everything is mine – I can put stuff everywhere, go crazy on weird experimental stuff, print stuff I wouldn’t normally print when there’s too many clients around! That was a big switch, and I became much more meditative in the space.

Below the last availalbe works from In Bloom.