Alexis Jamet

May 2022

Alexis Jamet is a French digital artist and graphic designer. He designs visual identities, animated short films that combine craft techniques and digital technologies and divides his time between graphic design, drawing and his personal practices.

Temple Magazine

Could you introduce your ongoing exhibition “ J'ai Des MIETTES Dans Mon SCANNER” at Oddity ?

Alexis Jamet

For the title, it started with my scanner with which I work to enlarge images. The scanner is at the center of my practice where I play with the roughness it can produce. Initially Oddity simply invited me to occupy the space for 3 weeks, without any constraints imposed. I had about 3 months of time to create the exhibition while juggling with my other jobs.

The exhibition space is divided into two parts; the first echoes the book Le Bruits des Pétales that I released in 2020, it’s a collection of airbrush flower bouquets. For this project I chose to step aside as a graphic designer, and I just made the drawings. Matías Enaut wrote texts from my sent images, these are sorts of poems or haiku that do not necessarily respond literally to the drawings. Jad Hussein, who took care of the layout of the book, made them correspond to the images in a very discreet way, they intervene like legends under the drawings, at the edge of the pages. Then these drawings inspired Matías who made an EP of them, and to close the loop I made animations to accompany Matias' EP. I was then invited by the West Bund Museum in Shanghai to exhibit this project; there were images from the book, screens, headphones with Matias' music that accompanied my animations. I never had the opportunity to show this work in a space in France and it is therefore part of this project that is shown in the first piece of Oddity; I made new images with the same colors and shape gestures from the book. The formats presented at the exhibition are these canvases with unique serigraphic prints of 160x120cm. They were printed at the Lezard Graphique workshops in Strasbourg.

The second piece of the exhibition is a cathode-ray TV installation with my animations. The character in the videos is called Miette and he wanders from screen to screen, in this checkerboard of videos. Its passage in the TV comes to light up the screen and to discover a new space.

Temple Magazine

The character came to hack your videos, didn’t he?

Alexis Jamet

Yes, something like that, complementing the sound effects and the soundtrack produced by Matías Enaut.
In front of this installation, I showed small format watercolor ink drawings which were sometimes used as a basis to make the animations.

Temple Magazine

What techniques do you use to animate your drawings?

Alexis Jamet

It depends! It’s often a mix of several techniques between digital and analog which enables me to bring texture. I also use free or easily accessible software on the internet such as artificial intelligence that I combine with scans and that I eventually animate on After Effect.

Temple Magazine

How did your animation project for Dries Van Noten go?

Alexis Jamet

I also combined several of these techniques, and I worked again with Matías Enaut for the sound. Mr Porter and Dries Van Noten gave me a video order where I had almost carte blanche, the ideal project to try things out. As a starting point, I had a recording by Dries Van Noten to illustrate and the constraint to link it with his collection, which was inspired by experimental animation cinema. I had to make a film about how to travel in time of confinement. The first image that appears in the film is his house in Belgium, then follows a more or less psychedelic journey accompanied by the voice of Dries. I also took some visual elements from his collection. I worked with Armand Beraud and Tom Noordanus-Calmels, the same team as for the Hermès film. My first proposals were more psychedelic than the final one, I have never been in contact with Dries directly. I had to make quite a few changes in the end! Such a project which allows you to be so free and which remunerates everyone properly is quite unusual.

Temple Magazine

How would you describe your concern with the order?

Alexis Jamet

I find the principle of ordering as rewarding as it is annoying depending on the customer. For example, I have this problem that many other people have, of being contacted to do something that has already been done several times in the past. This is a debate that can be very interesting as well as very frustrating.

For 3/4 years I think I have been claiming more and more orders because I am also better able to defend my ideas and desires.

For the exhibition at Oddity, I had the chance and the luxury of being able to refuse or postpone some of the orders for 2 months, and focus almost entirely on the exhibition.

Temple Magazine

You have come to a point where you are contacted for your own style, but you have to both fight to be able to try new things and not lock yourself into it.

Alexis Jamet

It's kind of a constant fight. I don't want to do only airbrush-based projects all my life, I like to be able to alternate mediums as I was able to do for the exhibition.

Temple Magazine

With fewer constraints, you also have the whole part around the music, especially for the clips and the identity of Matias Enaut that you produce.

Alexis Jamet

Yes, I try to accept only when I like it. In the field of music, I also made videos for the concerts of huge pop artists that for once I did not claim. This type of order allows me to make clips for free for smaller artists that I really enjoy. I do a lot of animation tests from music that I play on a loop, I then send them spontaneously to the musicians and often it leads to a project together.

Temple Magazine

Could you introduce your ongoing exhibition “ J'ai Des MIETTES Dans Mon SCANNER” at Oddity ?

Alexis Jamet

For the title, it started with my scanner with which I work to enlarge images. The scanner is at the center of my practice where I play with the roughness it can produce. Initially Oddity simply invited me to occupy the space for 3 weeks, without any constraints imposed. I had about 3 months of time to create the exhibition while juggling with my other jobs.

The exhibition space is divided into two parts; the first echoes the book Le Bruits des Pétales that I released in 2020, it’s a collection of airbrush flower bouquets. For this project I chose to step aside as a graphic designer, and I just made the drawings. Matías Enaut wrote texts from my sent images, these are sorts of poems or haiku that do not necessarily respond literally to the drawings. Jad Hussein, who took care of the layout of the book, made them correspond to the images in a very discreet way, they intervene like legends under the drawings, at the edge of the pages. Then these drawings inspired Matías who made an EP of them, and to close the loop I made animations to accompany Matias' EP. I was then invited by the West Bund Museum in Shanghai to exhibit this project; there were images from the book, screens, headphones with Matias' music that accompanied my animations. I never had the opportunity to show this work in a space in France and it is therefore part of this project that is shown in the first piece of Oddity; I made new images with the same colors and shape gestures from the book. The formats presented at the exhibition are these canvases with unique serigraphic prints of 160x120cm. They were printed at the Lezard Graphique workshops in Strasbourg.

The second piece of the exhibition is a cathode-ray TV installation with my animations. The character in the videos is called Miette and he wanders from screen to screen, in this checkerboard of videos. Its passage in the TV comes to light up the screen and to discover a new space.

Temple Magazine

The character came to hack your videos, didn’t he?

Alexis Jamet

Yes, something like that, complementing the sound effects and the soundtrack produced by Matías Enaut.
In front of this installation, I showed small format watercolor ink drawings which were sometimes used as a basis to make the animations.

Temple Magazine

What techniques do you use to animate your drawings?

Alexis Jamet

It depends! It’s often a mix of several techniques between digital and analog which enables me to bring texture. I also use free or easily accessible software on the internet such as artificial intelligence that I combine with scans and that I eventually animate on After Effect.

Temple Magazine

How did your animation project for Dries Van Noten go?

Alexis Jamet

I also combined several of these techniques, and I worked again with Matías Enaut for the sound. Mr Porter and Dries Van Noten gave me a video order where I had almost carte blanche, the ideal project to try things out. As a starting point, I had a recording by Dries Van Noten to illustrate and the constraint to link it with his collection, which was inspired by experimental animation cinema. I had to make a film about how to travel in time of confinement. The first image that appears in the film is his house in Belgium, then follows a more or less psychedelic journey accompanied by the voice of Dries. I also took some visual elements from his collection. I worked with Armand Beraud and Tom Noordanus-Calmels, the same team as for the Hermès film. My first proposals were more psychedelic than the final one, I have never been in contact with Dries directly. I had to make quite a few changes in the end! Such a project which allows you to be so free and which remunerates everyone properly is quite unusual.

Temple Magazine

How would you describe your concern with the order?

Alexis Jamet

I find the principle of ordering as rewarding as it is annoying depending on the customer. For example, I have this problem that many other people have, of being contacted to do something that has already been done several times in the past. This is a debate that can be very interesting as well as very frustrating.

For 3/4 years I think I have been claiming more and more orders because I am also better able to defend my ideas and desires.

For the exhibition at Oddity, I had the chance and the luxury of being able to refuse or postpone some of the orders for 2 months, and focus almost entirely on the exhibition.

Temple Magazine

You have come to a point where you are contacted for your own style, but you have to both fight to be able to try new things and not lock yourself into it.

Alexis Jamet

It's kind of a constant fight. I don't want to do only airbrush-based projects all my life, I like to be able to alternate mediums as I was able to do for the exhibition.

Temple Magazine

With fewer constraints, you also have the whole part around the music, especially for the clips and the identity of Matias Enaut that you produce.

Alexis Jamet

Yes, I try to accept only when I like it. In the field of music, I also made videos for the concerts of huge pop artists that for once I did not claim. This type of order allows me to make clips for free for smaller artists that I really enjoy. I do a lot of animation tests from music that I play on a loop, I then send them spontaneously to the musicians and often it leads to a project together.

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