Zechariah 5:5<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 B\u00e9trisey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u2013 wood, metal, glass, stone, plastic \u2013 are bent, turned, milled, brazed, crimped, cut and filed. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEat when the meal is ready, speak when the time is ripe.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ethiopian proverb<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marcel doesn\u2019t let on much about his past. But with the bits and pieces he lets slip we can construct a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a child he would find treasures in his village rubbish dump. The parts he recovered enabled him to build \u201canything\u201d: from the turbo of his moped \u2013 confiscated by the police \u2013 to the lighting system for a wild disco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnyone can succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Failing is an art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was expelled from school before the end of his compulsory education, described as manually useless\u201d (but rather gifted at literature). During his apprenticeship as an electrician, he \u201clearned how to learn\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur first duty is to make mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s our freedom and our wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A long period of wandering followed, his \u201cfirst real school\u201d. \u201cI needed to make mistakes, that’s my way of learning. Other people learn differently, for example by studying; that’s not my case.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u2013 by imagining what its maker had done, understanding their method, then how the machine worked and, finally, the cause of the breakdown \u2013 but he was also capable of hijacking devices (the so-called “CD player<\/a>” 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<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGo and enjoy good food and sweet drinks<\/strong>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Nehemiah 8:10<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLife is like lion’s teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are those who pick them up and those who listen to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marcel takes a tender look at humanity, playing down its weaknesses by translating them into burlesque objects (l\u2019Heure de rentrer<\/a>,\u00a0l\u2019Ap\u00e9roscope<\/a>\u00a0and 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,\u00a0Le Tortilleur<\/u><\/a>\u00a0illustrates the logorrhea that characterises the art world. And what better way to depict the workings of an addicted brain than with\u00a0Demain j’arr\u00eate<\/u><\/a>, a balance in perpetual motion, or almost?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI like flaws, things that don’t work, fragility,<\/p>\n\n\n\n in people and things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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