APPROACH
Encountering the Living World
Humankind holds a profound fascination for Nature. The two share a complex and entangled relationship, a mythical subject crystallised by Orphic and Promethean attitudes. In today's context of global environmental crisis, it has become necessary to rethink the way we interact with it.
CONCEPT
My gaze is first and foremost that of an artisan, seeking to convey the aesthetic perception of Nature as closely as possible to reality. My practice therefore lies at the crossroads of fine craft and biology, of know-how and letting go.
My artistic work consists in setting up bio-integration processes that invite Nature to take part in the making of the work. These systems of co-production allow me to avoid imposing a mimetic or stylised representation of Nature, and instead to reveal its existence by materialising its expression.
Whereas industrial products, and the culture they convey, are defined by their impermeability to the natural world, my co-creation protocols aim to instil a symbiotic perspective within them. They operate like a natural system of organic decomposition, integrating the detritivorous species specific to them, and stage the phenomenon of vegetal entropy.
The structural and symbolic permeability thus achieved allows me to produce semi-human forms, manifestations of a cooperative aesthetic that dissolves the boundaries between the natural world and humankind. It is a collective endeavour, oriented towards a new awareness of aesthetics, that marks the beginning of a co-evolution.
BETWEEN
KNOW-HOW
AND LETTING GO
BIO-INTEGRATION
the processes
"An aesthetic question emerges from these processes. The notions of monstrosity, grotesqueness, ugliness, and disgust, largely cultural in nature, are brought into play..." LOGÉ, Guillaume. Wild Renaissance, the art of the Anthropocene. PUF. 2019. 184 p.
STRUCTURING
The structural bio-integration process focuses on environments that preserve the imprint of living beings. Soil emerged as the obvious choice. Earthworms (Lumbricidae), the most emblematic fauna of this environment, were chosen as collaborators. The artistic work consists in rethinking the object under investigation as a vivarium, in order to reveal the earthworms' own interpretation of it. The vivarium is designed according to the vital characteristics of the collaborating species and incorporates a natural extraction system. Once the earthworms have been extracted, the imprint of the tunnels they have dug is moulded and sent to an art foundry to be cast in bronze, then chased and patinated.
GRAPHIC
The graphic bio-integration process focuses on soil-free environments capable of materialising the expression of Nature. The protocol preserves the imprint of living beings by means of food colourings. These coloured solutions are applied to crawling organisms of the Arionidae family, placed on a porous surface. As the individuals move, they leave a trail that is gradually printed onto the support. The imprint is integrated into the support when the latter is durable, or becomes the subject of an independent graphic work.
REALIZATION
the processes
IN THE SERVICE OF DURABILITY
Metal makes it possible to transpose the expression of nature and carry it through time. The techniques of the art bronze-smith, particularly chasing combined with hot patination, draw on the material's great resistance, malleability and recyclability to anchor the work in a logic of durability.
CHASING
For almost 5,000 years, chasing has travelled across civilisations and eras without ever ceasing to be a space for representing the world. It is precisely this continuity that makes it a critical tool: bringing a contemporary gaze to an ancestral gesture also means questioning the permanence of our fascination with the living world and the forms we choose to give it.
PATINA
In nature, fossilisation occurs through the mineralisation of an organic body. Hot patination works in a similar way, remineralising the metal body. This artificial oxidation, the product of a thermal reaction between oxides and metal, accelerates and directs its natural reactions. In this way, the two processes echo one another.
REMANENCE
A decade of artistic research has given rise to forms and colours that belong to a twofold remanence: that of the living world, whose imprint materialises through bio-integration processes, and that of a family history rooted in stonework.
THE LEGACY
Of a color
ÉCHAILLON
The Échaillon colour takes its name from the marble-like limestone worked by the Biron family for nearly 70 years in the Rhône-Alpes region. This chromatic research into mineral hues pays tribute to that family history and to this territory. A massif formed over 150 million years ago, Échaillon features varying layers of limestone that yield stone in three distinct colours: pink, yellow and white. It holds an abundance of fossilised species, bearing witness to the region's biodiversity, shaped by the ancient presence of a sea and a tropical climate.
WHAT ESCAPES
Capture
ENTROPIC FRACTURES
The imprints generated by the graphic bio-integration process form a network of lines that proliferate at random. This biological pattern is interpreted as an empty space in the making, a black hole into which matter folds, a fracture affecting the sculpture as a whole.
BIOLOGICAL FORMS & PATTERNS
Bio-integration processes have made it possible to develop a hybrid formal vocabulary, oscillating between figuration and abstraction, which draws on the principle of projection to signify both the presence and the disappearance of its subjects.
