In conversation with Prysm Edition
Sébastien Roulet and Arthur Marcelja met as teenagers painting walls in Marseille, and founded Prysm Edition in 2017. They work mostly in monotype, using screen printing, a process built for repetition, to make prints that exist only once. Colour comes from memory and from accident as much as from any plan, and the images land somewhere close to landscape, abstract enough for anyone to put themselves inside them. We first went to see them in their workshop in a studio visit to Prysm Edition.
We asked them about the partnership, the city that shaped it, and why a reproductive medium suits work that cannot be reproduced. Their prints are available in the Prysm Edition collection.
FG: Prysm Edition is built around a partnership between two artists. How did you begin working together, and what did each of you bring to the studio that the other didn't?
PE: Hello! Sébastien Roulet (1988) and I, Arthur Marcelja (1991), started working together in the early 2010s, mainly through graffiti. We spent a lot of time outside tagging walls and planning our next operations, which naturally created a strong bond.
Then we broke away from that scene through publishing via screen printing. I trained through a vocational certificate (CAP) in industrial screen printing, while Sébastien was a student at the Beaux-Arts school in Marseille.
In 2017, we made our duo official by co-founding Prysm Edition. I think our respective gaps and skills complement each other, and we felt the need to pool our perspectives and resources to establish ourselves in the world of publishing and screen printing. On my side I had a more academically technical approach to colour, while Sébastien engages with the medium in a freer, more intuitive way. By combining our two approaches, we've been able to experiment with other ways of producing and creating together.
FG: Screen printing is normally associated with producing editions, but each of your monotypes is a unique, one-of-one artwork. What drew you towards using a reproductive process to create something that cannot be reproduced?
PE: Monotype holds a central place in our practice, even though that may seem paradoxical at first. Unlike traditional screen printing, whose purpose is to produce works in series, it allows us to explore the uniqueness of each print. While some pieces belong to the same sequence, each one remains a one-of-a-kind piece, shaped by the variations inherent to the printing process.
Through this approach, we repurpose the classic uses of screen printing to turn it into a personal and expressive language. Experimentation, production accidents, repetition, and the gestures specific to each print become the building blocks of our work. We see screen printing as a field of artistic research, where each image asserts its singularity and offers the viewer a unique experience.
FG: Your prints have become extremely popular and immediately recognisable. What do you think people connect with so strongly in the work?
PE: The colours, obviously!
Our works are mostly abstract, which adds to their contemplative potential, making them accessible and poetic. Our audience is everyone. Each monotype is inspired by a memory shared between Sébastien and me, or by a personal story. By turning toward abstract forms and experimental colour work, we try to create almost hallucinated landscapes that anyone can project themselves into. We don't come from an academic art background, so we draw on alternative references to compose our work. This keeps us accessible, even to people without an in-depth knowledge of art in general.
FG: How has working in Marseille, and being connected to its independent artistic community, shaped the identity of Prysm Edition?
PE: Since the 1970s, the phenomenon of artist collectives in Marseille has had no equal in France. Marseille is fertile ground for alternative initiatives and, perhaps, for disobedience. The city that saw us born and grow up has inevitably shaped the way we come together and work.
It is also marked by strong contrasts: its dense urban topology sits alongside protected wild landscapes, open to the Mediterranean Sea. Our compositions reflect these paradoxes and have continued to inspire us for nearly ten years now. We see screen printing as a field of sensitive research, one that lets us continually question its uses, push its boundaries, and open up new artistic perspectives.
FG: Looking across the growing series of monotypes, can you see a visual history of your partnership and how your shared language has developed?
PE: Yes, inevitably. Our professional and personal relationship evolves too. Every initiative circulates, branches off, and then adapts so that it's never carried out without the other's imprint. This flexible, two-voice methodology is unique to Prysm Edition. The dynamics of listening, compromise, and sometimes letting go shape our output.
We can each produce work on our own side and the result will still be Prysm, sometimes carrying each of our own singular sensibilities and moods. There are so many of these that a single monotype isn't enough on its own to express our artistic language. That's why we produce so many images, to build this story, these capsule collections, and to keep feeding this collaboration.
FG: After establishing such a distinctive visual identity, what are you currently trying to disrupt, discover or push further in the studio?
PE: We try never to stay locked into a single aesthetic, so we increasingly work with digital advances while also drawing on techno-cultures. On top of that, our many collaborations, with institutions, artists, and professionals in image-making, textiles, or music, have constantly pushed our visual language in new directions. And finally, we leave plenty of room for error and imperfection. That sensitivity, and that unknown element, feed our experiments and are, I believe, the DNA of Prysm.
