Cyril Debon, painter and ceramist, for laughs and for better times
I like to think I'm the boss
Until now, I'd never met a model agency owner. And yet, God knows that these international structures play a key role - all the more so in the fashion capital - in proposing up-to-the-minute physiques for collection presentations. In other words, with the Mannequin Madeleine agency, the catwalks are far from having seen it all.
Among all the layers and dimensions superimposed on a city as rich as Paris, I was about to open the door to a world reserved for fashionistas, with its shadowy characters as brilliant as they are secretive, as powerful as they are complex. Not surprisingly, Cyril Debon invited me to meet him at his premises in Aubervilliers. With the ateliers of Maisons d'art Chanel just around the corner in the flamboyant 19M complex designed by Rudy Ricciotti, and those of Hermès in the neighboring town, the backstage world of haute couture is moving to the north of the conurbation.
Cyril Debon seems to have had several lives already, like so many explorations that he updates as he pleases. Having begun his studies in graphic design, he continued them at the Beaux-Arts. He began with painting and came to ceramics after questioning his relationship with the canvas. He began by producing utilitarian artefacts before turning to sculpture. Having researched his work and activities, I said to myself that with him, we wouldn't be dealing in pompous cartels or corseted art. I thought we'd relax a bit. And right now, a morning in the company of Cyril Debon, sitting in his boxer shorts in the lotus position on his faded green fabric sofa, talking about his work with a passionate gab, is priceless. Neither is his lukewarm brown juice served in a dodgy mug. But be warned: with Cyril Debon, relaxation is probably just an aesthetic attitude. For with this hard worker, please take off your shoes when you enter.
Cyril Debon, in shorts and flip-flops, at his desk.
You’re a native of Bordeaux who moved to Paris, which proves that it’s not only the other way around. What memories do you have of Bordeaux?
[Long soupir] I still remember that I had to get away. Quickly. When I was studying at the Beaux-Arts, I would see the artists of the generations who had graduated before me and observe those who remained, what they were becoming. And in fact, there was no dynamic. Bordeaux doesn’t offer a cultural dynamic for young artists coming out of the Beaux-Arts. There is a cultural offer, but it’s more for the general public, especially when it comes to contemporary art. There are initiatives, but they all run out of steam after two years. So there was clearly no future for me. My memory of Bordeaux is of initiatives that fall by the wayside… of the Garonne.
And what about the city?
It’s a middle-class town. That’s all it is. It lacks freshness, food for the eyes, food for the brain. I’m talking about contemp’ art. But when it comes to music and partying, I’ve had a blast. There’s a real music scene with the cellar culture. I’ve been in several bands and I’ve had a blast.
Then you arrived in the Paris region in September 2014. Where did you land?
Porte d’Orléans. It’s really the cliché of the provincial who comes to Paris and visits the first apartment he’s offered. I knew very little about Paris. I didn’t even know the suburbs like Montreuil or Aubervilliers… I didn’t know anything. And so there was a landlord who showed me around an apartment and said: “Voilà, it’s 56 square meters, 1,800 euros a month, Porte d’Orléans…”. So there I was… It’s horrible actually, I’d been fed so many prejudices like “Paris is expensive” that I thought, “Well, that’s the rates.” So I signed for myself and my two roommates at the time. The three of us ended up in 56 square meters at Porte d’Orléans for 1,800 euros! We settled in, got jobs and, above all, we all worked from home. What’s more, all three of us are painters: Louis Granet, Alice Hauret-Labarthe and me. We’ve got the munchies, so it’s actually quite easy. Then, after a few months, we realized we’d been screwed. And right away, in June 2015, we arrived in this apartment. I’ve been here for seven years. Louis Granet and I bought it together, because it was cheap and, above all, it meant we could both work from home. It’s 90 square meters for 550 euros a month each. The living room we’re in today was a mess. He worked in the dining room and I worked in the living room. There was paint everywhere. There’s still some on the floor. I’m a bit worried about the deposit…
Was Aubervilliers a town you knew?
Nah, I didn’t know anything about it. My roommate visited; I was working as a receptionist at the Picasso Museum. I couldn’t take the tour. But Louis said to me: “Go ahead, we’ll definitely take it and get on our bikes straight away, because transportation is hell.” And that was it, I learned to live in Aubervilliers, to love Aubervilliers.
In two words, what’s the vibe?
It’s a “don’t complain about behavior” atmosphere . You have to get through everything that’s wrong. There are lots of things that don’t work, but you get used to it. I’ve been here for almost eight years and I’ve lived with lots of different people here. For girls, it’s not cool. My ex used to live here and she got picked on all the time. My brother didn’t like it either. He lived in Malaga and Berlin. He came here and didn’t like it. But the opening of the metro changed things. Not yet in terms of ridership, because it takes longer. Otherwise, things are gentrifying like crazy right now. But above all, what’s changed is that my whole neighborhood has been under construction since I’ve been here. And when they finished the work and took down the barriers, wow, the horizon opened up. And that’s the first change I’ve seen, and it’s a great change. For everyone. It’s just great.
So you made your mark in Paris when many Parisians are now looking to leave the conurbation because of all the constraints they became aware of during the Covid: prices, density, transport, building work…
That’s for people who came to Paris for business. I came up here for more than business. For me, it’s everything. In fact, my work is my life. I come here looking for culture, openings all the time, exhibitions all the time, projects, encounters, an ecosystem that you don’t get elsewhere. And I like everything that’s wrong with Paris. I’ve been well trained. I’ve been told so many times “you’re going to shit” that when I arrived, I was ready. I’ve adapted. I don’t suffer from Paris. I’ve met some real dickheads. But I don’t have a problem with the city per se. The more I’m there, the more I like it.
Let’s talk about your approach. I’d like to think of it as whimsical, humorous and offbeat. How is it received, especially in a Parisian contemporary art market that can be a bit serious and uptight?
These are questions I don’t ask myself at all. I’ve never put myself in my practice in terms of strategy: “So there’s this, should I do that?” Never in my life. I’ve been doing what makes me laugh since I started ceramics. In painting, I was a bit more stuck-up. I had a conceptual approach, I wanted to please everyone, the elite as well as those close to me. And I got a bit lost in that. But in ceramics, I do exactly what I want, what makes me laugh. And it works. At least I think it works. I sell a little and the public at my shows often laugh their heads off. You shouldn’t be afraid of humor.
Whereas up until now your approach to painting has seemed referential, your approach to ceramics seems freer…
When I started painting, I needed a lot of reference images. I spent a lot of time on the New York library website, where they have a self-service digital collection of high-definition scanned images. I collected engravings with figures in the background, because what I like is figuration. I had files with incredible detail. This was the starting point for color paintings. I would transpose little characters lost in a black and white background into large color paintings. That’s been my process up to now. And the fabulous thing about ceramics was that I didn’t need any references.
You were inspired by what you might call “academic” paintings, which you transformed into surprise folders filled with works of art by you and your friends, for example. It was already a rather offbeat approach that deconstructed painting: a canvas folded into a cone. Then you moved into ceramics, where you freed yourself artistically, as a true self-taught artist. Perhaps this explains why.
Total. Initially, I came to ceramics as an extension of painting, I came to ceramics through decoration, to paint on plates. That’s how I started, buying porcelain plates and painting on them with pigments. I had my pieces fired by private individuals in Paris, who swindled me for some time by charging me 50 francs for firing four pieces. So I bought my own kiln and put it in my living room. There it was, in the far right corner. I didn’t need to think about the deposit… Anyway, since I had an oven, little by little I got the urge to do more than just decorate. Having it here, being independent, being able to start firing at any time, freed me up. I didn’t know any ceramists, so I learned on YouTube with tutorials, particularly those on the Jean-Luc Benoist channel. He’s a good popularizer in craftsman mode.
Basically, you’ve reproduced what many artists do: you’ve made your eye by confronting it with a “classical” artistic tradition, which you’ve deconstructed to free yourself from it before embarking on an autonomous approach.
Yes, I was able to free myself from this thanks to the ceramics stage. Until two years ago, I couldn’t start a painting without a model. I needed a whole bundle of reference images on my back. And the crazy thing is that this summer, in my new paintings, as in my ceramics, I no longer needed those images. I’ve freed myself from the weight of references.
In your ceramics, you seem to have come naturally to animal forms.
Animals make me laugh a lot. It makes everyone laugh. What works best on the networks? Compilations of animals that make people laugh. Secondly, it’s extremely complicated to sculpt humans. It doesn’t take long to make monsters. Scary things that you don’t want to show at all. So, if you want to get closer to human figuration, it’s a good start to start with animals and gradually move towards anthropomorphic figures. On the other hand, I save the human figure for painting. It’s a kind of boundary that distinguishes my practices. Humans for painting, animals for ceramics. It’s a bit like how things fit together.
You started out doing series of ceramics with dogs and then moved on to frogs.
It happened a bit by chance. It was for an exhibition in Marseille, and I’d been commissioned to make decorated egg cups because there were going to be lots of eggs at the opening. I started to think about it, and said to myself , “No, but I’m sick of it”. I told them, “I’m not going to make you egg cups, but animals that will hold the eggs in their hands, with their feet, on their backs.” I made a series of three large animals, a dachshund, a toad and a duck. And then, little frog models doing gymnastic poses, and I thought that was so cool. I thought: “These characters are fun, they all have their own personalities. Okay, let’s put them together under a label.” And I turned it into a modeling agency. Funny, I called it “Mannequin Madeleine” right away. But I hadn’t yet thought of making them wear clothes. And after two months, I said to myself: “OK, go ahead, make clothes from big brands so that it’s a real modeling agency.”
Today you define yourself, among other things, as the owner of a modeling agency.
It’s a series in my practice, the Mannequin Madeleine series. And yes, I like to think that I’m the boss of this agency, I do the castings, I answer the e-mails, I select the brands, I do the shoots, I do everything. It’s pretty funny.
Don’t you think there’s a touch of old-school paternalistic domination in your approach?
Yes, frankly, you can criticize me too much for that. But it turns out that my models spend more time on vacation than working. If you add it all up, there are five or six pieces with models who work, i.e. who wear clothes, and all the rest of the time, they’re chilling out, my frogs. On a 35-hour basis, they’re working 10 hours a week. I’m a cool boss. At least I think so. There are three times: the time when they’re wearing the clothes, the time when they’re promoting the mannequin brand, which means merchandising, everything from ashtrays to Mannequin Madeleine teapots and so on, and then the time when I’m representing them in their leisure activities. And in the end, if you do the ratio, they’re more often doing nothing, strutting on a balcony, or, most recently, for Solitude Club, being on vacation. I did a beach with lots of deckchairs and the frogs were chirping. There was just one shoot on the beach; it was a Rick Owens shoot, with a model wearing a Rick Owens dress, and a photographer. But I understand the question. In fact, Mannequin Madeleine has a hotline.
You haven’t taken advantage of your ascendancy to have a special relationship with any of your models, who could blame you?
No, no…
There’s a lively debate within sports federations over the issue of transgender athletes. Is Mannequin Madeleine open to transgender frogs?
Yes, of course. They have no real gender and decide what they want to be. Sometimes these creatures have full briefs, sometimes you can’t see a thing. Sometimes they have bras… So it’s a fairly open agency that frees itself from the ultra-draconian criteria that can prevail in the fashion industry in terms of weight, height, silhouette… I must confess, however, that my models are pretty wiry. I love slender people. I have a bit of a god-like role in this agency, since I shape them… It’s bloody complicated… There are minimum aesthetic criteria. There’s something for everyone. Today, there are different types of agency. I remain in a sort of tradition of slender silhouettes.
Have you ever been asked about animal exploitation?
Sometimes my mom drops me “coms’ ” on Insta. Terrifying. I’d done a series of animal plates, with animals carrying plates on their backs. And my mother dropped me a very first-degree com’, like “It’s horrible, it looks like it’s been crushed by the plate, it’s not okay.” She was sad for the dog, who was in a rather funny position anyway, he seemed to be laughing. I think she was a bit right. I won’t do it again.
Can you tell me something about Poush, the artist incubator where you’re in residence?
For me, Poush was the thing I’d been waiting for. Well, not necessarily this format, but from a financial point of view, it was something that was lacking in Paris. In other words, all the studio spaces cost 350 francs a month to have a board on trestles and a piece of wall. I couldn’t afford that. And when Poush came along, they offered affordable rates. When I moved in, for me it was 15 square meters at 170 euros all inclusive, heating, electricity. You know, the economy in an artist’s life is the most complicated thing to bear. That was a great point. So I applied and was accepted. And then I was surprised to discover that there were 200 artists in a 16-storey tower before it was refurbished. So it created a crazy emulation on all fronts: friendship, creativity, project construction; financial too, with a lot of people passing through, exchanging each other’s networks. A proposition that didn’t exist for artists and audiences alike. It changed everything.
Will you be returning to painting? Have you thought about a new direction?
That was last summer’s mission. Get back to painting. Find a formula, something. Mission accomplished. I never gave up painting. It’s vital for me. But the moment I stop getting pleasure from something, I take a break. I still get a lot of pleasure from ceramics, but I had this little voice inside me. I’ve got a lot of friends who are painters and I’d see them moving on and I’d get the itch. It had to come back. But now it’s good. In fact, a number of bridges have been built with Mannequin Madeleine.
I’d like to ask you how you feel about the place of art in our society?
I don’t like it when an artist develops a metaphysical or spiritual discourse about his work. It bugs the hell out of me. You can ask questions about very concrete things, when you’re making engaged art for example, you can ask questions to denounce or criticize. But anything that revolves around the expression of feelings or energies, I find, is part of a fashion that bugs me. I think pieces should speak to a person’s soul. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about model agencies and model frogs, but I’m not talking about spirituality, emotions and all that. The emotional power of a work, its capacity to stimulate, comes from the work itself, not from the discourse that accompanies it. For me, there are works that strike a chord and I don’t need any explanations.
Let me rephrase: is art a meta-religion that has replaced traditional religions in our secular societies?
It’s the collector who creates the corpus of his religion, with all the myths that the works can convey, by adding pieces and combining them. He will create a narrative that inevitably resonates spiritually with him.
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