In 2023, EpOx & BoTOx seemed to have reached the end of its discourse, having remained rather faithful to its youthful fervor of a decade prior: 2013.
E&B had thus failed to grow up and retained a somewhat adolescent impertinence from its era. Its name, referring to epoxy resin and botulinum acid, aimed to express this idea of assembly, bonding, and DIY surgery, but could just as well have meant “bits and pieces.”
The desire to publish never disappeared, but the political scope of E&B’s works was limited by its aesthetic reach, and a period of reflection was necessary to define a new, more mature and coherent editorial line aligned with our aspirations. It was not about overturning everything: the positioning related to the printing and manufacturing method would remain the same: silkscreened works from start to finish, and handcrafted (for this, the new name guarantees it).
Enriched by hundreds of readings, these past few years have highlighted the cruel deficiency from which E&B suffered: the absence of text, the lack of a voice. And yet, we don’t need to be told that an image is a language! (some even say it’s worth 1000 words) but, DAMN IT! Don’t you smell the sulfur in the air at the end of this quarter-century? A dire omen exhaled by putrid breaths with supremacist, fascist, and ultraliberal undertones?
The urgency to claim more than an eccentricity or graphic singularity, to be more than an atypical and marginal niche, gnaws at us and presses us, pushing us out of our comfort zones and off our hinges to the point of wanting to SHOUT! and to WRITE. And to forge with words what is in fusion in our images: rage.
EpOx et BoTOx does not disappear; the element merges into the hollow of La Main Qui Cale, in the form of a collection that keeps its own catalog and will welcome other future artist books with more sporadic publication than until 2023. La Main Qui Cale, for its part, will publish all other forms of work (from the annual or biennial review (depending on the mood) to the monograph) that will intertwine with its images: the short story, the pamphlet, the poem, the essay, the cry – but not the last.
