Interview with Juce Gace

On the occasion of his Wood Morning Paris exhibition which will take place from March 25 to 28, 2022 at 32 rue de notre-dame de Nazareth (75003), we met Juce Gace and were able to discuss with him his career, his desires and of course his exhibition.

The photos below are the work of the wonderful @Kerbans

How do you become a toy designer?

(laughs) By chance. By passion and by chance. In fact, I started by making small objects like stickers, pins, t-shirts, patches. Since I liked the "small collectible" side of pins, and by dint of creating visuals, I collaborated with street artists and I got noticed by a big producer of art toys, Mighty Jaxx, who was looking for artists all over the world to expand its global visibility, with one or two artists per continent. Suddenly the little pine designer that no one knew found himself in there! At first, I didn't believe it, I thought it must be a scam... It was crazy!

It turns out that it was true and we launched, at the end of 2017, a first piece which was the first A Wood Awakening and of which the 200 copies left in 36 hours. This immediate success, when I was not known in this environment, made Mighty Jaxx think about his desire to only do “one shots”. They let me create other pieces produced by them like Darumario, Maneki-Dino, and decline the A Wood Awakening to make it the most famous piece of my universe. In the meantime, I fell in love with toy design and its community, so I started learning 3D design, meeting collectors, blogs, brands and above all having more fun with this new medium.

How many different figures did you make?

So wait, I'm only counting the models currently released and I'm not counting the variations of pieces... In this case, we must be at 8 pieces in 4 years. And all confused, I will exceed the fortieth piece on the occasion of the event! With almost 10 pieces a year, I was lucky to be well surrounded and to mainly take care of the creative part of the projects because in self-production, I would never have been able to do so much.

How did you come up with the idea of making a Pinocchio like that?

It comes from several things! I really like to take icons from my childhood by adding a slightly surprising twist, not necessarily naughty by the way. It doesn't have to be just cute. The animation and toy market is dominated by cute and slick projects. I want to keep the cute side, but adding a little weirdness. Basically, the idea came from a collaboration with a tattoo artist called Encre Mécanique who donated a pin. I took the idea and created the A Wood Awakening character, design, and story. He is therefore waking up, in pajamas, not very awake, he stretches when he discovers the thing. I wanted it to be naughty, but not perverted or shocking. He has something very naive about it, we worked a lot on the facial expression. The idea is to deal with the awakening of sexuality, its discovery and the shame that it can cause.

You made variations of this model with other characters if I'm not mistaken?

Exactly, I made I am Wood and Snow Balls, a snowman that, according to his story, was shaped by A Wood Awakening. And I also collaborated with a Dutch artist, Flawtoys, whom I met at ToyCon UK the day before the global pandemic and with whom I made A Stranger Awakening: a mix between his unique style, his transparency, his shine, and my naive style of the stretching character!

If you had a license that you could adapt without constraint, what would you take?

If I had to take out a license to expand my universe, I think I would take Woody Woodpecker, who is not well known worldwide, but he is a character that I really like and is intimately linked to the world of wood.

Are you a toy collector on your side or are you only a creator?

Both ! I'm a big collector, not only of toys, I also have a nice collection of street art since that's where my passion came from. Two days ago, I treated myself to my very first Bearbrick. I had never cracked because I am one of those who want to collect entirely or not at all: with the Bearbricks, it's mission impossible. I fell for the Bearbrick Pac-Man with its incredible patterns on the front and back. I love Pac-Man, it's one of the first diversions I did, Pac-Man with Homer Simpson, it was called Pac-Mer at the time. Otherwise, my acute collection is very often linked to meeting artists. I find it more and more difficult to collect works by people who, humanly speaking, are not great. In fact, I collect coins from friends. I love when the physical piece is totally in the image of the artist.

Get It Here

Who in the world of toy design would you see collaborating with one day?

I'm cheating a bit, I'm not going to name just one name. There is obviously Alex Solis with whom I have a closeness of universe, humor, attention to detail, cuteness and then we get on really well.

I'm not going to name artists with whom I have ongoing collaborations that I can't talk about yet, but there are!

The dream collaboration, but which will surely never see the light of day because of licensing problems, is Jason Freeny who is an exceptional artist, humanly brilliant, of crazy talent and above all with whom I have a close universe. . I don't dream like many of a collaboration with Kaws for example because it's a collaboration that I have trouble visualizing. There are artists that I admire more than anything, but with whom I cannot project myself because our universes are too far apart.

Find his universe here

In two weeks you will launch your first exhibition as a toy designer, can you present the project to us?

The event is called Wood Morning Paris and it was clearly born from the desire to create a place to meet in Paris. The observation that we had with several French toy designers is that there are a lot of collectors, a lot of toy designers, but unlike the sneakers or street art community, we didn't have a particular place to meet. The only place is Artoyz otherwise there is no event. There are some in Spain, in England, but not here. Initially, I was offered to do this exhibition. At first, I wondered who would go to see toys and then thinking about it the goal was to do a multiple event. Invite toy people to whom I will present exclusive pieces for this event, to bring Custom collectors with around thirty international artists who have lent themselves to the game of customizing some of my pieces. The idea was to have a map of the toy with essential artists, others more emerging so as to always have something to discover during the event.

As that was not enough for me, I wanted to mix everything with street art, collaborations with French and international artists to have once again either pure collaborations in which I went to their workshops to propose a joint creation, or artists who have had inspiration with what I have created and who have fun with it.

Will there be NFTs too?

Exactly. This is the last pole of the Toy-Street art – NFT triangle on which the exhibition is based. The idea is to be able to present artists who do not necessarily make toys or who have not produced toys and who are therefore brilliant. We are therefore in collaboration with the infinite object brand which is an American brand to be able to offer NFTs for sale. We really want to interconnect all of this and make the universes come together and mix. That a toy lover (re) discovers street art and vice versa. Let everyone meet there. The NFTs will have, for some, the advantage of being sold with the physical part represented by the NFT in addition to leaving with the screen containing the NFT.

And then let's not forget the main thing, having fun. I worked a lot of medium. For example, I invited a stained glass craftsman. I also worked with neon, carpet, always with the aim of mixing mediums, showing what existed and offering a total experience.

How does the exhibition go up? Did you have any specific criteria?

It's a lot of sleepless nights (laughs). At the base, I had the idea thanks to a gallery which asked me and then I mounted the solo exhibition, helped by friends and François Prost on the event part. I wanted to put the odds on my side so that everyone could have access to it. The French, but also the English, the Spaniards so the location in Paris was mandatory. For the choice of the district, we wanted a non-puritanical district, which would be ready to welcome the event with humor and benevolence. The zone we had set was between the republic, the chatelet and the marshes. We looked a lot because exhibiting toys requires places to secure the toys and showcase them in 3D. We are therefore in the L’œil Bleu gallery which lends us the keys and which is two minutes from République in a place conducive to urban culture and pop culture. The biggest job for me is production. The production of art toys can take up to 10 months with ship shipments which can be very expensive and time consuming. A whole logistics that artists on canvas do not have and which asked us for a fairly strict schedule. The artist/curator/collaborator triple hat was, in any case, very exciting! The last wish was to offer free entry and keep surprises so that people get their money's worth... Even if they won't pay.

What are your future plans?

Already, I will be offering exclusive and self-produced pieces for this exhibition. I would present two, one of which is 44 cm.

And for the future, I have plenty of projects that are very close to my heart, but I believe that the biggest project that awaits me apart from collaborations with a French artist, Hong Konger and another Austrian, it will be the creation of a new Wood Morning, a solo show that should take place in Hong Kong. I really hope it will be done with the current situation and restrictions, but it's off to a good start!