Many an adjective in the English language could be used to describe Rémy TASSOU, but ordinary certainly isn’t one of them. For the purposes of this article I have spent several hours in his workshop, and each visit inspired me in a different way. Whether it be about the man himself; his art; the philosophy behind it; the technology he uses as raw materials; or subjects entirely unrelated, each fact, every opinion imparted had the same effect on me as that which Rémy hopes to inspire in potential collectors: surprise and understanding. For example, how many of us were aware that the Apple Mac logo comes from the cyanide-laced apple eaten by the suicidal Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of Information Technology?

Crossing the threshold of Rémy’s underground workshop in Paris is like stepping into to Narnia or Wonderland. Lining the walls are shelf upon shelf of glass jars containing WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment): processors, transistors, circuit boards, resistors, microchips and fuses (to name but a few), all arranged by colour and size. It is incredibly well-organised, and the result of countless hours of work. Rémy has set himself an enormous task which includes scouring the streets for old computer, TV and hi-fi equipment, taking the machines apart, cutting away unusable pieces, painstakingly sorting the treasure and finally integrating it into the stock. The result, even before Rémy has started to sculpt, is a work of art in itself.

Rémy’s story begins in the early nineties, when he made the sculpture from which his genre, Cybertrash, was to take its name. Before this piece, which marked the turning-point in his artistic career, he used to fill glass bottles with microchips and present them to people at parties instead of the more traditional offering, wine. He would declare that the processing power in the bottle was greater than that of any machine.

Cybertrash was well-received by family and friends alike, and this reaction inspired Rémy to continue along the same lines, always developing and improving his pieces in his quest for beauty and originality, the driving forces behind his work.

The fact that Rémy lives in his workshop is of paramount importance to him. He describes it as ‘bathing in the components’, and goes on to explain its essential role in the artistic process: subconscious intervention, which could happen at any time, day or night. Being constantly surrounded by his materials is a perpetual reminder of what he has in stock and what is potentially compatible with the piece he is in the process of creating. Similarly, "walking past a sculpture thirty times a day helps the subconscious tell me what it needs".

The finished product is not entirely the result of subconscious influence, however. There is also a strong element of calculation involved. Rémy is a keen chess player, and compares his working method with game strategy: "You have to make decisions, for example which pieces to use and which colours, and there are innumerable options, each of which takes you down a different path. You never know where each path will lead until after you’ve chosen it, and once you’ve made the choice, all the other options disappear. Once I’ve made a decision, I never go back on it. It never frightens me. If something doesn’t feel right, or if I don’t feel inspired, I wait for the right moment before continuing with a piece." He goes on to explain: "An artist is a creative person. A creative person is not someone who will find a solution to a problem; he will find all the solutions. And an artist will find all the solutions and then choose the best one."

The decisions Rémy refers to are partly influenced by the materials available. These are obviously much more limited than those of a painter, and a certain amount of maths is involved for symmetrical pieces, in order to work out whether there are enough to fill two identical sides. For this reason Rémy prefers working on the inner layers than on the outer ones: for a smaller space, materials are in more plentiful supply, and there is more choice. The more rare and interesting components are only ever used for the centre, for the same reason.

The sculptures themselves are either two- or three-dimensional: they take the form of totems or wall sculptures. Artistic influences include Basquiat, Rothko, Pollock, Hockney, Nam June Paik and Arman. Non-artistic ones are found in science and nature: fascinated by fractals and greatly interested in the infinitesimally small and large, Rémy looks to cauliflowers, snails, atoms and the solar system for structural inspiration. His pieces are as organised as his workshop, with great attention to layout and detail. Many are based on fractal structures, some reflect his fascination with the interaction between humans and technology, and for a brief period Rémy dabbled in bionic insect sculptures in order to please his public.

Whatever the style of the piece, the aim remains the same: to inspire surprise and understanding in the beholder. Surprise, usually the first of the two, is the result of any combination of the following: the materials used, the way in which they are put together (one example that springs to mind is that of flexible circuit boards wrapped around industrial-sized fuses), or for those of us who look extremely closely, the (apparent) lack of glue and dust traces that usually betray the method behind the finished piece. Understanding is slightly harder to achieve, although not impossible, and it comes from the realisation that there is a sense to the art Rémy produces, a complicated mélange of calculation and subconscious inspiration. Sometimes the surprise gives way to understanding, for example the supple circuits wrapped round industrial fuses are difficult to recognise at first glance, but as the eye is drawn to the centre, the mystery reveals itself in the form of the same supple circuit, this time laid flat.

With each new piece comes an experiment: never-before used component, a different assembly method, or an original technique. An example of the latter is the substitution of green mirror-backing material with black paint, in order to reduce the reflections of hard edges. This constant experimentation is part of Rémy’s pursuit of originality.

The use of WEEE itself is not entirely original. Nam June Pike, for example, uses 1940s and 50s television sets and radios in his sculptures. However, they are dependent on electricity and irreplaceable materials in order for them to exist as they were intended to. Rémy’s works, by contrast, are not supposed to light up or be plugged in, and are thus unaffected by power cuts and other technical problems.

In addition, by using pieces which used to have a specific, purely utilitarian function, and stripping them of that utility, Rémy succeeds in drawing attention to an aspect hitherto unappreciated by the vast majority of us: their beauty. His works transcend utility in order to reveal the purely aesthetic qualities of his materials, traditionally considered as having a specific, purely functional property. This is just one of the ways in which Rémy forces us to look at things in an original and atypical way.

For Rémy, beauty and originality are the two goals. He accepts that these are difficult to obtain, and is adamant that beauty in particular is beyond his, and any other artist’s, reach: "Beauty exists only in woman, because a beautiful woman is admired by a large percentage of the population. There is not one single work of art that has obtained this majority consensus. An artist can only orient himself towards beauty, try to go there; that’s the goal. Beauty to the artist is what truth is to the journalist. It inspires feeling. I asked Rémy whether beautiful women in art can automatically render a painting or sculpture beautiful. His response: "Well, not necessarily, but it certainly helps!" Essential to the quest for beauty is the aforementioned surprise element: Rémy agrees wholeheartedly with Baudelaire’s declaration that ‘there can be no beauty without surprise’.

Rémy’s art is not the only extraordinary aspect of his life. It is certainly his raison d’être and the most time-consuming activity he takes part in. However, he still manages to hold down a full-time job in the financial sector, as well as finding the time to socialise and spend time with his two children. But perhaps one of the most striking things about Rémy is his unshakeable calm, due to the high level of satisfaction he gains from his life, and his way of living. His art is obviously largely responsible for this. He has discovered a passion that gives him the direction many of us seem to lack, and his tea-total, balanced routine helps to assure that he is rarely prone to anger or stress. Stress is no good for his work: the calculation and the subconscious intervention necessary to the completion of a sculpture rely on a certain equilibrium only obtainable through moderation and routine. His body clock is so finely tuned that he has no need for an alarm. He never takes holidays, because he insists that art is a holiday in itself: "It’s like playing, and why should you take a holiday from that? Holidays are for workers, and I’m a player." The most important thing to him is his health: "When you’re healthy, what have you got to worry about?"

A different version of this article was first published by Kilometer Zero Magazine