Joël Stein

Born in 1926 in Saint-Martin-de-Boulogne, Pas-de-Calais, lives and works in Paris
Member of the G.R.A.V

Joël Stein – Paris, December 2009

Joël Stein obliterates the target to get straight to the point.

Art theorist, painter and sculptor, he focuses on transparency and volumes, or the distortion of volumes. Back in the 1960s, he composed complex geometrical forms like Helix, long before clever computer software calculated that sort of thing, and he still plays on weightlessness as if gravity were only an illusion.

I can still picture him coming into the gallery in the rue de Seine; we chatted, and after a while he said, “But you know… I’m Joël!”

We had been talking for half an hour and I was convinced that I was discussing a future exhibition with Jean-Pierre Yvaral.

I hadn’t asked him to wear a work around his neck so that I could recognize him and he confessed that he himself had a very poor memor y for faces.

At the recent Milan art fair, where he was represented by the Valmore Gallery, he came to my stand and bought a work by Patrice Girard.

That pleased me immensely, as much as when François Morellet
purchased an Emmanuel Fillot sculpture from me.

Lélia Mordoch