plastic covering each piece is striking. Is this a statement about the futility of “protection”— be it of
art, the self, or our eyes?
THOMAS: Pixel-Collage is a series of collages. A collage means pasting together at least two existing
elements to create something new, a new world, a new image, a new light. Doing this means giving a
response through Form: Form is not just an idea, Form is the core. I want to give Form, because giving
Form is the most important thing. The plastic covering is part of this form. The plastic is not a protec-
tion, but the will to frame my work myself - I do not want someone else to frame my work, I want to
keep it thin, fragile, two-dimensional. This is a decision and an affirmation. The plastic sheets I use
are the same as those that florists use to wrap flower bouquets. To me, this material seems appropri-
ate in the context of collages made with photocopies and transparent tape, enlarged from magazines
and standard-sized paper. The plastic, as well, is the form I have found that enables me to include the
empty spaces that appear as part of a real collage.
MUSÉE MAGAZINE: In a recent interview you mentioned the “stupidity, the easiness, the velocity” of
doing collages. Your choice of words intrigues me, especially the word “stupid”— what do you mean
by this? And what are some o f the materials you like to work with, other than images and pixels?
THOMAS: “Stupidity” is - to me - an absolutely positive term. It’s not antagonistic with intelligence,
sensitivity, or being awake. I am for stupidity, for energy, for non-economization, for generosity, for ex-
penditure, for exaggeration, for blindness, for restlessness, for acceleration, for precipitation, for excess,
for self-transgression, for headlessness. Therefore “stupidity” is a form against security, quietism, econ-
omization, good quality, capitalization, harmony, consumption, obedience, correctness, anxiety, naiveté.
MUSÉE MAGAZINE: I read a little about your time with the Communist group, Grapus. It sounds very
punk rock— and you’ve clearly maintained your desire to create public and non-exclusionary works
to this day. Was moving from graphic design into collage a natural transition for you? How does the
medium help you tell your story?
THOMAS: Thank you for giving me the occasion to clarify something: I never worked with Grapus,
not one single day! Because they simply did not want me! To work with Grapus was one of the reasons
why I went to Paris in 1983. But I quickly understood that there was no common work possible - on
an equal level - and because I did not want to work for them as an executor, I had to confront my first
failure. I don’t know why people think they are informed with the idea that I worked with Grapus.
Actually, I found myself even more isolated in my lonely arrival to Paris on my own. The love to do
collages and to work with existing elements, such as blind texts and found images, helped me establish
my own path away from what I thought, wrongly, to be graphic design. It’s not that my way was a
transition from graphic design to art. It was - to me who wanted to do graphic design “coming from my
own” as I called it then - the cruel understanding that graphic design is not possible without an order,
or on a commission. I understood that with art I had to agree, and was happy to encounter the only
possibility to emancipate my own understanding of form, what form should be and what importance
it should have. I had to emancipate myself from the limitation or self-limitation, of graphic design. Art
opened the welcoming field for confronting my ideas, my artistic will, and my understanding of form.
Suddenly, critical questions arose: What work of art can I do? What work of art should I do? What work
of art makes sense to me - what work has to be done?
MUSÉE MAGAZINE: In your press release for Pixel Collage you state that, “Pixelating a part of a
picture might imply and indicate that there is worse, much worse, and that there is something incom-
mensurable that is concealed.” Would you say that by placing pixelated fashion images next to images
Thomas Hirschhorn, Opposite: Pixel-Collage n°105; Following spread: Pixel-Collage n°106.
28