Christian Boltanski and Catherine Grenier

No, I never understood what "postmodern" meant. I like to say that I am modern and not postmodern, but I could not explain why. "Postmodern" is a term that irritates me, although "modern" in fact also irritates me. I think someone like Szeemann was not modern, he escaped the categories. The big difficulty is not being modern, but also not being an old reactionary jerk. The notion of modernity, the fact of wanting to be modern, is horrible although, at the same time, one should not be anti-modern either. I always say that I am a traditional painter, a bit to annoy, but also because I believe it and because I am horrified by the modern world… If I took a reference from the past, the art that I would like to do today would be closer to that of the churches Romanesque. Whether that is modern or non-modern, I have no idea. What I am trying to do is to restore the feeling that one has when going through a church, whether one is a believer or not. And when you see a ceremony that you don't understand anything about - there is a strangely dressed man who raises his arms, there is smoke, music, people who lower their heads ... You enter and feel that it is something important, but you cannot decipher it ... and then comes out again. It is about going through something you cannot understand, a set of visions, gestures, sounds.