The singular collages of Friborg artist Marc Moret exhibited at the Gruérien Museum – rts.ch

These are bones, locks of hair, knitting needles and other everyday objects which are stuck together to form strange sculptures placed like recumbent figures on boards and shrouds. These collages make up the work of Marc Moret (1943-2021), a Friborg peasant artist and poet who Lucienne Peiry, a specialist in outsider art, knew well.

Exhibition curator Lucienne Peiry has brought together the artist’s collages at the Gruérien Museum and explores their sacred dimension by confronting them with works specific to the Catholic religion. The exhibition “Fortress Against Anxiety” is the first major retrospective devoted to the artist.

Marc Moret was a very discreet man. Lucienne Peiry is the only one to have visited her workshop on her family farm. “I had the chance to frequent him for more than twenty-five years and to go see him almost every season,” testifies the curator in the Vertigo show on October 23.

A singular art

Marc Moret lived alone, in Vuadens, in Gruyère, on the family farm. Made aware of art by his mother who loved the theater, he devoted himself to writing and theater at a very young age, then, years later, to sculpture. He decides to confront his worries and anxieties by freeing himself from all norms.

Every morning, Marc Moret went upstairs to his farm, opened the windows to let in air and light. In the evening, he closed them, sometimes squatting at the bedside of his sculptures and meditating in the silence of the countryside, in contact with his deceased. His ritual completed, he left the premises, closed the door on which he drew a cross with his index finger.

Marc Moret’s sculptures are singular, insane, unusual and really very strange. “Marc Moret wanted to create anti-aesthetic, ugly works. He wanted to escape this seduction and confront time, which he wanted to freeze. (…) [Il a créé] symbolically very strong works, with objects that belonged to extremely close beings (…) These are not trivial works, far from it”, underlines Lucienne Peiry.

Actor of the Catholic faith

Mart Moret’s sculptures have something disturbing that is sometimes difficult to understand. It is precisely to understand them that Lucienne Peiry decided to enlighten them through religious art.

Marc Moret was marked by works specific to the Catholic faith – especially reliquaries. “He was very religious. He was an altar server. He witnessed this sensory and visual presence and actor of this Catholic faith. This left a memorable imprint on him. When he devoted himself to his creations, imperceptibly , he created works which have a lot in common with sacred works of art”, underlines Lucienne Peiry. The very way he creates is reminiscent of that of the nuns: isolated, in silence and secrecy. “He is an author of outsider art, because he creates his works in solitude, without hoping to sell them, in a sort of distance from the world, for nothing and for no one,” adds the curator.

In the works of Marc Moret made in particular with bones and locks of hair, the artist adds objects that belonged to members of his family: haberdashery items from his late mother or parts of his grandfathers’ bed , for example, which Marc Moret considers to be commemorative pieces. The result is unique productions of glue magma containing family treasures.

Comments collected by Anne Laure Gannac

Web adaptation: Lara Donnet

“Marc Moret – Fortresses against anxiety”, Musée Gruérien, Bulle (FR), from October 13, 2024 to February 2, 2025.

Guided tours: Sunday November 3, 2024 from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday November 9, 2024 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday December 1, 2024 from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Without registration.

Round table: “Plural perspectives on the life and work of Marc Moret”, Wednesday December 11 at 7 p.m. FREE ENTRANCE.