Interview by Rachel Gottesman

Great job on your print, Maxime!

A lot of us I think have heard of French Fourch before, but go ahead and tell us about it anyway.

French Fourch is an independent publishing house created by Tristan Pernet, Mr Pimpant and myself whose goal is to produce neat and original books. It’s really hard to publish the books you want to, it costs a lot of money, artists don’t necessarily have the means to do it, we are here to help them produce their projects.

We began by self publishing but our goal is to promote new artists who are interested and create a grand family : French Fourch. Personally to print books of people whose work I love is a greater satisfaction than my own publication. I don’t like the fact that it is always the same artists who are getting published in magazines, I don’t like cronyism, French Fourch is interested in everyone. We’ve already printed many books and t-shirts, we’ve set several exhibitions in Canada, France and Belgium, we want to do even more things the upcoming years.



Moreover, new people joined us and are involved in the project, it’s important to mention them. Mathieu Lambert is responsible for developing Fourch French in Paris, Sylvain Martet helps me here in Canada for communication and for the manufacture of books. All motivated people wishing to invest in our project are always welcome.

What's the process like when creating and printing your own zine?

French Fourch is scattered between Canada (Vancouver and now Montreal), France (Paris and Strasbourg) and Belgium (Tournai). Thus, every structure of our collective is independent in the publication of his books. As often as we can, we’re silkscreening covers ourselves, some of our new publications are entirely in silkscreened, the result is truly incredible.

Otherwise the process is fairly standard with the sorts of pictures to give a rhythm to the publication, the layout, we send it to our printer to have the first proof. I'm a very picky and demanding, so I've to get some details, some colors so that the final glue as possible to what I have in mind. When we work with other artists, we never go back on their choices from the moment we accepted their project, it’s their book, we simply ensure that the book is the best possible quality. We are a small publishing house so we print the books from 100 to 300 copies.

All books are grouped on French Fourch website, it allows a unit in the editorial line. During our travels, we’re trying to trade some stock in order to ensure visibility of all our publications in different art crafts and exhibitions that we do during the year. Regarding French Fourch in Canada, I self-published my first zine called Home Made Book which is still available at the French Fourch website or at my online shop. We also started a new collection called Discovery, which enables me to publish I like.



The first artist that we have published is the amazing Gianluigi Rivasi. He is an Italian artist that I met on Flickr, he has been involved sine then in our free online magazine Free & Cool and I’m glad to work with him.

About the upcoming books, I can give you the names of Ginette Lapalme which is also very active on Threadless, but also Jon Vaughn and William Emmert. Apart from the collection, Jenni Rope makes us the pleasure to sign a new zine that we’re looking forward to print.

I see that you do a great deal of tee design too. (You have your own line of tees at PalmerCash.) Do you feel more strongly about wearable art, or printed art?

The t-shirt is a true fashion item, many shops have sprung up and it is true that is quite common for an artist to earn money this way. I had interest in t-shirts early on, I was fascinated to see my work screenprinted and worn by people around the world.

It was thanks to Threadless that I got my first visual printed called « Death ». Since then I had to make about thirty t-shirts and I say it's really crazy.



To answer the question, I like the concept of wearable art as it suggests that art is accessible. I’m not necessarily fond of galleries where art is sometimes at the mercy of ridicule and synonymous of snobbery. I encourage everyone to draw and print their own t-shirts, posters, bags, zines, have fun, do not take themselves too seriously.

What, and who influences your style the most?

Skateboard influences all my designs, it is like an obsession. I think skateboarding is like drawing, it’s a technical discipline in which you must be creative and have fun. Skateboard is definitely an art.

The last zine that I published at Café Royal called Hello/Goodbye is a tribute to skateboard, but also to music. In fact, music greatly influences my work, some songs inspire and create feelings that unfortunately I don’t think I can translate with drawing. This is why many of my illustrations have the title song. If you take a look at my iPod right now, you could listen tracks from Jónsi, Beach House, Antony And The Johnsons, Eels, Devendra Banhart or Eliott Smith.



In terms of graphics, I think Picasso, Joan Miro and Henri Matisse all invented what is done in comtemporary art. I also like what Keith Harring and Jean Michel Basquiat brought to art, something between graffiti and children's drawings that I try to keep in my illustrations.

If you got to see your artwork printed on any object, what would it be?

Logically a skateboard or a record sleeve.

What is the work you are most proud of?

I’m the kind of artist who sees all the mistakes that he did after he finished work, so I rarely wear my t-shirts, I avoid looking at what I have done in order to think that the best is yet to come. Nothing lasts, everything must always be recreated. Style doesn’t count, only the ideas matter…



Thanks for chatting with me!

Thank you and thanks to everyone who gave me the pleasure to vote for me and buy my t-shirt.



Interview by Rachel Gottesman

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