Covid acted in me like a catalyzer, an electroshock. To escape the feeling of loneliness and fear, I dove into sculpture, in order to dare what I couldn’t dare before. Daring the ultimate Sacrilege: to break the marble! For a long time, I had been wondering: how could I bring to light the limits of our inner systems, how could I reveal the interactions between the impact of human beings on the planet and the malaise of our society. As the virus, and especially the lockdown, exposed the limits of our personal systems (what it was easy to live without and what it was impossible to really live without).
It also showed us how much nature needed to take back her rights and how much she was able to do so when we humans were taking our foot off the gas. Do you remember how loud the birds were singing? How bright the stars were? How our hearts would clench in our chests every evening at our windows?
To express this, I needed a concept: By putting face to face, or rather by fitting pieces of broken marbles (or better said marbles destructured the way the soil cracks due to the drought) with human emotions: I question, I express this malaise.
But it is more than an aesthetic question, it is also a technical question as I recycle marble that is supposed to be dumped.
Sculpture and Circular Economy: It’s possible!
The vast majority of my sculptures are made of recycled marble. And the few ones that are not reused were typically not meant to become sculptures. I often use old tombstones destined for the dumpster. Other times I use remains of slabs bought from local marble suppliers. Thus Sculpture and Circular Economy becomes possible! By sculpting these stones I bring their beauty and purpose back whilst questioning our society of overconsumption. Nowadays can we still accept that recycled is «less» than new (less good, less beautiful, less luxurious, less chic ...)? I claim the beauty of these stones. I claim that they are even more beautiful because they have a second life! And if even marble can be recycled, reused, aren’t there other solutions in other fields that we haven’t yet thought of?I’m also questioning my own life. We will all have had «several lives» in our life. Does a second life mean the failure of the first one? Can't a second love story be just as beautiful as the first? Couldn’t each of them be as beautiful, as strong, as magical and just different?
Veins, some sort of affinity between marble and skin.
The veins in marble are one of my obsessions, as they remind me the veining of our bodies, just under the skin, carrying life in our flesh and sensitivity in marble. The artery that drives my work is the emotion that I express through my sculpture. It is the need that I feel to give my art meaning. It is as if sculpture was for me another language, a tool allowing me to understand the world.But the veins like to keep their secret. The magical moment when they appear in the place they were meant to only happens after long weeks of work. Their path is underlying. How can I explain that I’m looking for something almost invisible? I can feel them under my chisel, but above all I can hear them. Each color change is a change of density and therefore of sound. But it is a hard time, an emotional time, hard to share as it is almost impossible to explain. Finally, when polishing, they finally become visible and I can finally explain myself.
I generally work with marbles that are not commonly used in statuary. I look for stones that have a story to tell. There are hundreds of different marbles but they are often neglected in favor of only one, the Statuary Carrara White. Yet all of them have their beauty, their story to tell, their strengths... their weaknesses too, as humans have. This is probably the reason why I never work with blocks of statuary marble.
How I work...
I often say that I dream my sculptures, but that isn’t the whole truth. Stone carving is a long process. First and foremost, I need to tame each and every block. That’s why when I’m working on a project, another one is waiting on a turntable. But before sculpting them, I need time to get to know them: I turn around them, look at them, look for veins, for weaknesses, almost inhaling them. And while I’m working on today’s sculpture, I’m dreaming the next one.And then... polishing marble demands long and patient working hours. And these are my most creative hours, when I can let my mind wander and dream, build the next sculpture, and then come back to the present moment and begin the dialogue with my next stone. I call it a dialogue because if my «dream» is accurate, it will be even more beautiful if it is in tune with the stone. I want the dream to exalt the stone while the stone exalts the dream but not to force my dream on any stone. This means I work almost in a modified state of consciousness. And for each sculpture a unique song is playing again and again in my headphones. This helps me to reach and keep the necessary level of concentration and emotion.
Symbiosis between stone and sculpture
I am not looking just for a sculpture, I am looking for the symbiosis between sculpture and stone. In my view, at the end of the process, stone and sculpture should become a unique and new thing. There is almost a gestational side in my work. From two different entities, the stone and my idea, a new entity will appear as a result of both. This is why I must dare to face the material while respecting it and myself at the same moment. Working in affinity with the stone and not against the stone, like this vein arising at the eye’s corner of my sculpture and figuring a tear rolling down the cheek.I consider my sculptures being a compromise between abstraction and figuration, between tradition and modernity, between an academic form of realism and the novelty of emotional expression...but as I think about it, my sculpture is more than a compromise: it’s an expression of duality. Duality is for me one of humans’ main traits. The beautifully perfect and the absolute evil do not exist. What would black be without white? Moments of laughter without moments of sorrow have no worth. I’m looking for the balance between all of these concepts. A fragile balance but also a vital one.
And continuing this duality, I work in 2 different workshops, one is official, where I teach or show my works, the other is more secret, it is my den. This is where I carve my stones, where I explore, alone with the stone. I need this solitary space, somehow outside the outer world. And I switch between these 2 workshops, between these 2 ways of my being. Back →