On a narrow, quiet road just a stone’s throw from Hôtel de Ville in Lyon, the windows of a gallery are lit up and glowing. It won’t catch you until you are directly in front of it— That’s how I stumbled upon this place about three years ago, attracted by the glowing lights that drew me in like a fly to a light bulb: Atelier Mory.
“Immersion. it’s also a way to escape, to completely enter something,” said Mory, the gallery owner and artist. “It’s like a timeless bubble. It’s like taking a trip to Mars. You’re completely at the center of something that’s not in you, but outside of you. Transcendence.”
Mory had been using glow in the dark paint much longer before he realized it. One day, around the COVID era, he decided he wanted to do an art exposition in the dark, with small lamps lighting up each painting, forcing visitors to approach the art and see the details.
“I needed people to unconsciously focus on one thing at a time.” he said.
One of his friends, a dancer, wanted to perform at the exposition with a black light.
“When I used the light, I saw I had used paint that [glowed], but it wasn’t intentional. That’s how I found out. And I started looking into it” said Mory. Seeing his paintings glowing, he thought there was a way to have fun with this.
Four years later, Mory almost always integrates fluorescent paint in his paintings, creating an immersive art effect. “It allows me to approach painting differently, because it causes problems,” the artist explained. “And that forces me to find solutions that, intellectually, if I didn’t have those problems, I wouldn’t have found those solutions.”
“Almost all my paintings have that double reading,” Mory said. “It’s the second layer. Otherwise, the priority is the normal painting, the normal view. Then, I try to find a way to bring originality with the fluorescent paint… the way I use it, it’s supposed to tickle something specific in the painting. You’re going to look closer, you don’t have the whole image. It’s like a camera focus. It tells something other than what you see with light. And that necessarily has more impact on the brain because it’s more contrasted.”
Mory shared in great detail the techniques and challenges of using fluorescent paint in his immersive art.
“Fluorescent paint it not a pretty paint. If I had to work only with it, I wouldn’t,” he said, explaining how difficult it is to be mixed with regular paint. “I think that’s why even professional painters don’t use it much. Because it’s hard to master. To master it, you have to mix it with other techniques,” he said. “So you have to know your painting by heart and know each time, which color you’re using. Take a step back to know if there’s oil there or no oil, if there’s acrylic…”
He says it’s been a learning process over the years. He seamlessly incorporates fluorescent paint into his landscapes, portraits and sculptures. Stepping into the studio, you are surrounded by immersive art…beautiful paintings that glow when the lights are off, giving an intentional immersive effect.
“It creates the effect I’m looking for, which is, it pushes people to play. I’m pushing them to interact,” he explained, referring to the reactions of visitors who enter his gallery. “Since I started using fluorescent paint, I see the difference—before and now. It catches their attention.”
Our interview was regularly interrupted by wide-eyed visitors poking their heads into the studio, and eventually stepping in after being warmly greeted by Mory.
“It’s very immersive,” said Yannick, one of the visitors in the gallery. “You often have distractions in your daily lives. Here, because it’s so all around you. You can only focus on it. It forces you to appreciate it.”
While Mory’s art studio hosts a variety of events, including painting and sculpting classes (for kids, work teams or bachelorette parties!), he’s interested in hosting a new type of sensory event.
“What could be interesting here is to do events with cohesive elements. With music that varies,” he explained. “I’d add ocean sounds, a bit of water, a river.. and add a smell. I don’t know—wood, or something from the countryside.”
He explains that the event would have to be at night, as guests could “leave real life behind.”
” I think there are things that exist at night that we don’t have during the day.
“I think there are things that exist at night that we don’t have during the day,” Mory said. “Maybe it’s solitude, or I see less of the outside stuff, so I’m fully inside. I don’t know, there’s something sacred about the night. We’re more inward.”
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