Biography

“Lift your eyes now, and see what this is that goes forth.”

Zechariah 5:5

This story begins with a visit to a museum nestling under the rooftops of the town of Sion, where clocks with elusive mechanisms coexist with absurd, fine and poetic constructions. Everything is there: the place, the objects, and above all, everywhere, the spirit of their creator, Marcel Bétrisey.

His ideas take shape in his workshop, where majestic machines are salvaged, refurbished and, if necessary, fabricated. Everything here is hard, solid,heavy. The materials – wood, metal, glass, stone, plastic – are bent, turned, milled, brazed, crimped, cut and filed. It’s through this struggle that ideas are imprinted on the material, that a trace remains, because Marcel likes what lasts. Here, delicate unions are formed between materials, and between techniques as varied as mechanics, electricity, hydraulics, pneumatics, programming, optics, 3D printing and physics. Kitsch meets the sublime under the fingers of a designer who plays with the boundaries between materials, eras and concepts. What shines through is the value of manual work, determination, precise knowledge, a sense of derision and eclectic thinking.

“Eat when the meal is ready, speak when the time is ripe.”

Ethiopian proverb

Marcel doesn’t let on much about his past. But with the bits and pieces he lets slip we can construct a story.

As a child he would find treasures in his village rubbish dump. The parts he recovered enabled him to build “anything”: from the turbo of his moped – confiscated by the police – to the lighting system for a wild disco.

“Anyone can succeed.

Failing is an art.”

He was expelled from school before the end of his compulsory education, described as manually useless” (but rather gifted at literature). During his apprenticeship as an electrician, he “learned how to learn” and acquired a certain notion of order. It was an opportunity to measure himself against a straightforward, structuring boss, for whom he retains a form of gratitude, but with whom relations were complicated. As were those with other authority figures during a troubled adolescence.

“Our first duty is to make mistakes.

That’s our freedom and our wealth.”

A long period of wandering followed, his “first real school”. “I needed to make mistakes, that’s my way of learning. Other people learn differently, for example by studying; that’s not my case.” He spent years wearing out his soles and his health in the four corners of the world, tirelessly pursuing uncertain goals, one leading to the other. After covering thousands of kilometres, mainly on foot and by bike, after crossing many countries with more or less troubled political destinies, after exposing himself to all sorts of dangers, he lost the illusion that elsewhere would be better than here.

Back in Switzerland, to escape unemployment, he opened a mechanical repair workshop in the old town of Sion. This first workshop was his second school. It was also a turning point in his life, as he discovered he had a wide range of skills. Not only was he able to bring a damaged objects back to life – by imagining what its maker had done, understanding their method, then how the machine worked and, finally, the cause of the breakdown – but he was also capable of hijacking devices (the so-called “CD player” period, made from a sewing machine or a porthole, among other things), and then designing them from scratch (the “clock” period, still in progress, which would merit an entire book and about which much has already been said here).

“Repairing cleanses your spirit” he says. He adds that his work allows him to take revenge for an age when everything is thrown away. But there are many other things that drive him. Marcel is inexhaustible. His sense of formula, his simplicity, his curiosity, his relationship with time and his taste for the unknown all stand out.

“Go and enjoy good food and sweet drinks.”

Nehemiah 8:10

“Life is like lion’s teeth.

There are those who pick them up and those who listen to them.”

Marcel takes a tender look at humanity, playing down its weaknesses by translating them into burlesque objects (l’Heure de rentrer, l’Apéroscope and others) that reflect the absurdity and derision of our daily lives. Creating is his way of freeing himself from the defects of the world by taking action, rather than fighting against them. For example, Le Tortilleur illustrates the logorrhea that characterises the art world. And what better way to depict the workings of an addicted brain than with Demain j’arrête, a balance in perpetual motion, or almost?

“I like flaws, things that don’t work, fragility,

in people and things.”

By creating, he is fulfilling a mission that no one has entrusted to him. He knows where he’s going, convinced of the justness of his approach. Reveling in the creative process and the mystery it entails, he has little love for finished objects, unless they are useful, like his tools. He tirelessly makes and unmakes, reusing parts, creating objects in the form of palimpsests, with new versions replacing old ones. He takes the time to find simple solutions to complex problems, discarding the superfluous in search of the dazzling. He has a talent for putting together things that don’t seem to belong together. The values that drive him and his vision of existence, far from noisily imposing themselves, are quietly deposited in the material. He believes that there is no need to seek meaning in his creative process. In his view, what can be done should simply be done.

“It would be stupid to have an idea and not carry it out.

You might as well not have an idea at all.”

His work is not entirely art, nor craft, nor science, but all of them at once. Is he only of our time? His position is reminiscent of that of certain researchers of the Romantic period, scientists, artists and philosophers, for whom science did not exclude wonder, inspiration and poetry, and who believed that the world was a source of mystery, that every question called for a passionate answer.

Self-taught, he is not confined to any particular school, which allows him to cultivate his know-how and to enrich his knowledge day by day through the material and his interactions with it. He answers his own questions by producing pieces. For him, this freedom means “being true”, not telling lies, stripping himself of anything that prevents him from seeing himself as he really is. It’s a freedom that allows him to say no, to undo what has already been done, in a radical rejection of all vanity.