Artist Statement - 2002

For two years now my work has revolved around the theme of water, a key element in life and nature. Water is at once both indispensable to life and a destructive force. What interests me is the alchemical quality of water and the way in which man appropriates this element of nature. I realized that water was becoming a component of my work in 1992 during the creation of my open-air installation piece entitled "Spinning Ellipses". For this work, I cut sections of turf out from the ground and suspended them between trees. From the very conception of the work in my preliminary drawings, the hanging turf seemed to need nourishment outside of the earth, and the holes left in the ground got me thinking about the water that would pool there unused, with no grass to sustain. At this point, I understood what the idea behind this project was: to materialize the intuitive feeling I have regarding the relationship between things. The water in the holes that I’d filled needed something to make it stand out so as to be recognized as a form stemming from my imagination. It was thus that I discovered fluorescein (a biodegradable dye used in tracking the flow of underground water) which enabled me to exploit the “volume” of the water. This experience influenced my subsequent work and I became fully aware of the importance of dialogue with the environment.

In 1997 in the southwest of France, my artistic investigations were taken deeper still in yet another ‘dialogue’ with the environment in the region of Les Landes. While searching for a work site, I came across the town of Mont-de-Marsan through which I was able to leisurely stroll. All around, the immense forest of maritime pines – the theme of the exhibition – was fascinating. This artificial forest was created by the forestry industry of the region in order to draw water out from the soggy ground and thereby make it suitable for cultivation. When one of these maritime pines is cut, a perfectly transparent resin flows from each of its capillaries, like dense perspiration. The resin, which is normally brown, is so diluted by water that the wood of the pine is made very heavy. This circulation of water in the tree trunks provided the inspiration for my work entitled “Transmutation/Vie”. For this piece, I placed 12 tree trunks measuring 40cm in diameter and 2.5 meters high in a pool of springwater. I cut each trunk at eye level and inserted a cylinder of polyester resin. This artificial resin was like a crystallization of its natural counterpart and drew attention to its circulation in the pine trunk. This project, conceived around the theme of life and death, was comprised of an installation on each bank of the main river through the town. In the end, the work blended into the environment, greatly highlighting the meaning of life through the alchemical force of water.

I also used fluorescein in the work that I presented in 2001 at the Maison des Arts in Malakoff. Green or yellow, the water would change color depending on the color of the recipient and the lighting. This locating dye evokes the attitude of man as observer in his search for water’s natural course: one of the first steps in his appropriation of nature.

For a decade we have been talking about the upset in global climate, storms, floods and the unwelcome transformation of the ecosystem. In December 1999, violent storms raged throughout France and we saw thousands of trees knocked down by the sheer force of the winds. Immediate action was taken to clean up the mess, evaluate the cost of the wood lost and put in place a reforesting scheme which will last for several years to come. Whether for ecological or economical reasons, it is obviously for the benefit of man that we take such care with nature. While unable to master it, we build around us a nature which is more or less submissive to the human order. Finally, man and nature stand side by side under the control of society. Man sees himself by looking at artificial nature; he acts on himself as on nature; he constructs himself in the unique goal of serving society.

In 2000, for my personal exhibition at the Parisian gallery CIACC, I illustrated this principle by gathering together pieces of nature: tree trunks - standing once again after the storm but separated from their roots by discs of wood, shorn of branches and leaves, their height also restricted by discs of wood. They merely stood, like humans adapted for life in society. The increasingly violent and unforeseeable upheavals in the global climate seem to prove that Nature is fighting back against the tyranny of human society, and that she insists mankind seriously rethink its way of life.

How is my artistic vision going to continue to develop from here? The response will come to me through more dialogues with new environments.