The Comics Journal, Kim Jooha, 6 décembre 2018
Sammy Stein’s œuvre can be divided into two categories [+]
SAMMY STEIN ON THE ART/IFACTS OF THE REAL AND THE VIRTUAL
As an editor of the Lagon anthology with Alexis Beauclair, Bettina Henni, Séverine Bascouert, and Jean-Philippe Bretin, Sammy Stein is at the forefront of the new French Abstract Formalist Comics (or French Structural Comics), which employ minimalist, geometric, and graphic style with abstract narratives focusing on the formal structure of comics, similar to Structural Films from the 1970s.
Sammy Stein’s œuvre can be divided into two categories. The first group is quintessential French Abstract Formalist Comics, exploiting the poetics of transformational and processional comics language. The second group features art objects in exhibitions. They all share the central theme of how the human creation of art/ificial objects mediate the dialectics of the real (immortal truth) and the virtual (fiction).
[...] The first group —Moving Sculpture (2016), Sculpture (2016), Chondrite (2016), Crayon #1-2 (2016), Pyramid (2017), and Hatch (2018)— shows the process of the transformation or the creation of art/ifacts. The process is often not linear or causal. After Moving Sculpture and Sculpture, Stein developed his own comics language, blurring the line between repetition/difference and transformation by exploiting the sequential nature of comics. Usually, comics language works as a dialectic of repetition and difference as Thierry Groensteen argued in System of Comics (1999). The similar object which appears later in the comic is the same object (repetition), only with a bit of difference. However, the sequentiality of the image does not need to be limited to one possibility. Indeed transformational potential of the sequentiality has been studied previously, in both comics and art, for example in David Weiss’ Die Wandlungen [The Metamorphosis] (1975-9). The difference between repetition/difference and transformation is that for the former the object is the same, while in the latter it has a different identity.
Often the process of creation includes destruction, or the destructed relic is the end product, not a clean, finished product. We exhibit these relics in museums (the second group, especially Return to the Center (2014). We write history and stories about them.
Stein’s processional and transformational comics language evokes the sense of time in the static world of comics, and the passage of time reminds us of mortality. Stein shows how humanity tries to defy mortality and the passage of time by creating and studying art (Moving Sculpture, Crayon, and Pyramid) and writing history. This is also why we make and read comics. Ars longa, vita brevis (Life is short, but art is forever).
However hard we try, we can’t reach the truth, and a history can’t be the history, because histories are always subjective just as art is. In this way, Stein’s œuvre examines the relationship between the reality, truth, history, and fiction. But Stein is not pessimistic. Just as an artifact can become art after being used or destroyed, Stein’s objects keep transforming into other objects and continue in a new life. Destruction as creation. The transformation as transmigration. cyclical nature of creation and destruction and the persistent pursuit of production is underlined by the fact that most of Stein’s first group of works are cyclical.
[...] The second group —Return to the Center (2014), The Turtle Museum (2017, with Séverine Bascouert), Multimonde (2017), Salut Marcel (2018), Visages du temps (2018), and Galerie 128. Souvenirs de l'âge d'or (2018)— features art objects in exhibitions. While they have words and dialogue (English translations are included), there is no character psychology, conflict, or storyline. The narrative is actionless. We only see artworks and surroundings and hear (or read) the information about them. Characters who are talking are not depicted. [...]
The universe is chaotic and nonlinear, just like Stein’s first group, but humanity strives to understand it by making and appreciating art in the way that we are reading and analyzing Sammy Stein’s works. That human yearning to defy nature is improbable in the way that Stein’s catalogue includes real and imagined artworks, but it does not mean that it is worthless. Just as we appreciate the “process” of transformation in Sammy Stein’s first group of works, the struggle itself —the art, history, study, and fiction— is invaluable. [-]