In our next Everything is Index, Nothing is History artist interview series we are introducing Antoine Lefebvre. Read our interview below to see what Antoine says about his art, the economy, and what we can expect to see in the upcoming show. 

IC: Tell us about your project for Everything is Index, Nothing is History

AL: This piece is called “Ma plus grande erreur” which means “My biggest error”, because it is covered with the word erreur on its surface. There is a tension in this work between the perfection I’m looking for, by writing the same word in a very uniform way, and the fact that as I’m hand writing these words, it will never be perfect. To me art is a quest toward perfection that will never be accomplished, and that shouldn’t be because perfection is boring.

IC: What is your creative background? How have you arrived at your current medium?

AL: I call myself an artist publisher, because everything I do is printed, and most of the time in large quantities. I also started a few years ago, as an artwork, a publishing structure for artist books called La Bibliotheque Fantastique. I came to this media by trying almost every medium, and I’m making mostly artist books now because I love books.

IC: Has the recession impacted your art?

AL: My work has always been influenced by economy, in every sense of the word. On the one hand, it has always been important to me to put a price on my work that would be affordable for everyone, or to make free artworks. To me an artist must be conscious that he is part of an economy. On the other hand, my work is also driven by an economy of means. I always think while making a new work of what I could remove so that only what is important remains.

IC: In your experience, do hard economic times hurt or help art?

AL: I don’t know, I think it’s just as hard for artists as everybody else.

IC: What do you want the audience to take away from your work? What do you take away from it?

AL: My goal as an artist is to invent a new way for the artist to

interact with the society, to invent his place in the society. To me, the time of the starving artist depicting the world of his time is over. Now artists must take the power.

Everything is Index, Nothing is History will be on view June 2 to17 at the Invisible Dog Art Center (51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn).

-Ivy Challis