14. You were making drawings up until 1996. The catalogue for your 1995 exhibition, Martin Szekely, Meublier-designer7 contains a passage where you say that sketches “are always as moving as a Polaroid picture, a precise moment in a process”. Looking back, what do you think of your work from the 1980s and 1990s?
MSz: From afar, with affection and a critical eye. It was a beginning, a period when I was trying to establish my individuality. I had to start somewhere. It’s strange saying this to young people who are just starting out now!
7 Martin Szekely, Meublier-designer, exhibition catalogue, Santa Monica Art Centre, Barcelona, and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1995.
MSz: Calling something a table immediately conjures up a basic, original model from our collective consciousness: a table archetype. My definition of an object as a commonality is suggested by the word itself, implying a convergence of opinion or accepted vision; for example, the same intuition and collective agreement that helps us recognise a landscape, an axe-head or a principle.
13. Common/commonality [lieu commun] are words you often employ. Do they signify anything other than archetypal?