Cuts & Shifts


FROM KOLAJ #22

Guillaume Chiron Publishes a New Book

Poitiers, France-based collage artist Guillaume Chiron has published a new book of his collages that has “even more collage” than his previous book, Mangez La Banane Parlez Debout (2015 and discussed in Kolaj #15), which had 170 works. Apprendre avec des pincettes (“learn with tweezers”) contains over 250 collages. The book was launched in conjunction with his solo exhibit at Superette in Paris. “Coupez décalez” (cut shift) ran from 23 November 2017 to 3 March 2018 and included many of the works that appear in the book: the “vintage absurdity” of framed collage, portraits, animals, paintings on picture frames and on the walls of the gallery.

This collage books article is a news and notes item in Kolaj #22. To see more, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.


Chiron is a French artist known for his surreal, colourful artwork. In his artistic approach, he mixes the real with the unreal, the known with the unknown. First, his art is deconstructed by multiple samples in a body of images produced and made available by the cultural industry. Then, he reconstructs and projects a new world, by selecting and bringing together some of these fragments. Sometimes, chance meets his work, and the magic operates. The lines of leaks follow each other and the perspectives coincide. New scenes appear, funny or incongruous, strange and reflexive.


Chiron produced many of his supernatural images under the influence of 1950s and 1960s cinema. The visual artist plays with size and the monstrous. There is an obvious attachment to a staging and for special effects made in an intuitive and artistic way, and we can easily understand why most of its sources are ostensibly vintage. Even drawn from their respective contexts, the materials used naturally extend their power of historical evocation. They urge the viewer to experience space and time.

To learn more about Chiron’s latest work and to purchase his book, visit his Tumblr at guillaumechiron.tumblr.com. At Superette’s website, www.superette.tv, you can learn more about “Coupez décalez” and see a video documenting the show and its installation.

This collage books article is a news and notes item in Kolaj #22. To see more, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.

Image (top):
Hunting Party
by Guillaume Chiron
24″x47″
collage, paint, resin
2017