I am in favor of nonsense

Cédric Quissola, winner of the Young Illustrators Award in Paris 2007, reports back from Marais.

How was your personal feedback after Illustrative? Did any positive news evolve from that?

First I went home by Metro rather tired. The success at Illustrative confirmed my plan to become an illustrating author. I became acquainted with several agencies for illustrators. Since then my work is represented by talkiewalkie.tw, by whom I also became involved in works for the press. French graphic-design magazine ETAPES is going to feature a double-page in August.

Your works presents surrealistic series in crayon. Is there a topic you would regard as a leitmotiv of your drawings.

No, actually there isn’t. There are no real repetitions regarding what I make a topic of my work. It is more a similar production process that the pictures have in common. Of course certain subjects such as the human body are more interesting to me, but actually it’s more about formal modules than integrative subject. My work separates in different phases. I’d say it all runs a rather scientific way. I can do something with the idea of a different reality and with the idea, that there is an alternative to every-day life. The work of David Lynch touches me. His movies fascinate by a subtle dose of surrealistic delirium and deliberate fiction.

Has surrealism taken influence on you?

My works don’t have the dream-poetics of surrealism. They are closer to our every-day world regarding their background as well as form. The pictorial aspect and the subjects considered are thoroughly contemporary. Some of my pictures are interpretations of images I found in the internet, others are mountings of sketches and personal photos. I also attach much importance to words at the beginning of a project; I write much and pen the concept which controls the drawings in the end. Actually it is a permanent exchange between the written and the drawn idea. In the end you can behold my pictures as well as read them, no matter if they contain a sentence or don’t.

Though the absurd idea is important to you, isn’t it?

We are used to monosemiotic pictures, pre-digested pictures. I am in favour of nonsense and the multivocal. I feel the urge to create pictures which are not complex in the perspective of formal understanding (I draw a dog in its traditional form), but which are complex in perspective of content (like a greyhound with a snail-shell). If I had to label my work, I would combine terms which otherwise do not agree with another: figurative abstraction.

What keeps you busy at present? What are upcoming projects?

I work on different projects like the corporate identity of a fashion label, Illustrations for a major aperitif-brand, and a personal project in the field of publishing.
Hitherto I did not have the time and even less the courage to knock at gallery-doors, but this idea is on my mind for month now.