PROFILES

This unusual artist uses roses to paint his pictures, but the flower isn't the be-all-and-end-all of his work, just a medium for expressing his vision of society.

A graduate with distinction of Villa Arson and the 2012 winner of the Ville de Nice prize, 27-year-old artist Quentin Derouet uses roses to produce his drawings, paintings and installations. He recently had a show at the Galerie Helenbeck in Nice, titled The Tears of Eros.

Crushed roses.

"In 2012 I won the Ville de Nice prize with a piece I made by crushing a bunch of roses along a wall. The act was radical, non­cha­lant, light-hearted, poetical. It was the first time I had used that tool but chance didn't come into it. Shortly before I had produced an artwork centred on flowers, roses es­pe­cially, by inviting some people to come and vandalise my exhi­bi­tion space with flo­wers. The result was very lovely.

The quest for THE flower.

Two years later, I took part, with the artist Fabrice Hyber (Les Réalisateurs programme), in a project to breed a new variety of rose, working with the well-known French rose producer and breeder Meilland. The new rose's sole feature would be to leave the loveliest residue when crushed onto a surface. I tested more than 500 roses bred over the last 50 years, and those with the most pigment were select­ed for hybridisation. We'll see the results this year or next.

A magnificent and ridiculous symbol.

"I've never found anything with more inherent symbolism and which is both sublime and caricatural. The rose encapsulates what is most beautiful and least attractive in humans: a symbol of Fascism but also of resistance, the inspiration for great poetry but utterly kitsch and syrupy on Valentine's Day.

Shades of red.

Apart from the symbolism, I'm interested in the purely material aspect of the flower. I take a rose and crush it and I have a painting medium. That makes you reflect on the history of art, from cave painting with fingers to the Renaissance's quasi-alchemical quest for the perfect pigment. The notion of studying colours entertains me but I've no desire to become a scientific expert. I see a form of poetry in the primitive act of burning a rose to get black or letting one rot to get brown.

Red to purple.

When you crush a fresh red rose onto a surface you get purple hues. I don't like purple but it imposes itself on me – in fact it's the tool without which the artwork won't be created. I always feel that everything is there and I don't have many decisions to make, I just need to let it all flow out of the thought.

Eros to Thanatos,life instinct and death instinct

That purple has imposed itself on me isn't coincidental either. Its symbolism matches questionings in my work, where melancholy plays a big role along with relating to the sacred and above all to death and eroticism. These impulses are a fundamental part of me and give meaning to this life. That's why I called the series I produced for my exhibition at Galerie Helenbeck The Tears

of Eros. It's a tribute to Georges Bataille's last book, in which he summed up his philosophy of death and eroticism. Eros, an anagram of rose.

Critique of society.

Over time my work has radicalised through a clearer style; today it's easily recognisable within a collective exhibition. But I don't want to be known as the rose artist. I don't paint with roses, I simply paint. Using this flower is only a pretext that – intellectualising it to the ex­treme – will allow me to open up new spaces and offer a critical appraisal of the society we live in.

Par Alexandre Benoist