Iconic artworks
Monumental human course
Du chaos à la sagesse
A sculpture that marks the history of art.
Throughout history man has created monumental works responding to a need to strengthen himself by glorifying : a God, a religion, a city, a nation, a leader … At the beginning of the 21st century an artist, the artist Val, had the opportunity to create a monumental work on the journey of the unconscious of man confronted with his existence and the landscape he must cross to reach wisdom. [ + ]
Val executed this project in seven paintings beginning with the chaos of the first consciousness and ending with the wisdom (peace) to which we all aspire.
Le chaos (Chaos) : Where a man is submerged in a mental and physical structures to which he is measured. It is a universe where he is outdated and must understand to face it.
La traversée de l’épreuve (Crossing the ordeal) : The structures becomes organised and the man is positioned with respect to his environment.
Cache-cache (Hide and seek) : What are we looking for? The man advances and plays not to confront his problem. Cache game with life.
Une forêt (A forest) : A dense forest in the middle of which a self-image appears.
Introspection : With the help of an Angkorian temple structure, the man walks around, evaluates the scale of everything around him, what he himself is … He finds peace in purity.
Les portes de la liberté (The doors of freedom) : Suddenly the environment is organized and the road is shown to him.
La sagesse (Wisdom) : There, higher up, peace is at the end of acquired purity.
We find in this work the three elements of the definition of art by the great Matisse from one hundred years ago. “Art exists to the extent that it brings balance, purity, peace”.
We all aspire to this journey and Val was able to bring us there with a monumental work where structures and environment of our life are treated masterfully with characters evolving and progressing towards what is the bottom of our aspiration to all: the wisdom that is only a form of peace. Unbelievably : to talk about life so masterfully in 36 meters of a monumental bronze work is an achievement that cannot be compared to anything else in the rich adventure of contemporary art.
Ocean utopia by Val
Nature is my daily comfort, the reason why I feel hopeful and grateful, the beauty of it, the continuous movement, the buoyancy, its immense diversity and its fabulous uniqueness.
The underwater seascape offers even more variety and life.
I like sculptures to interact with nature, changing aspect thanks to the outdoors shadows in the day or moon light depending on the weather, the time of the day or the season. I like observing the evolution of corrosion of the medium. [ + ]
Underwater, all these characteristics are enhanced, the day light illuminates the sculptures being in the seascape, playing with the curves, continuously changing with the movement of the waves, the sea drawing its own story with moving circles of light on the surface of the artwork. The alteration of the medium will evolve faster and will naturally modify the scenery.
With Ocean utopia my wish is to go even further than that, I wish coral reefs to grow onto some specific areas of the artwork, allowing a complete and free interaction between the strength of nature and my artistic creation.
Ocean utopia is organised like a city architecture with fluid lines, reminding the fluidity and the strength of water, allowing the fantasy of human life under the sea.
To remind us that we are shaped by our surrounding, the sculpture will be the starting point for growing new coral reefs, horizontally on the concrete base and vertically in the textured parts of the concrete architectures. I will define the original set up underwater and will then leave it to the elements.
The interaction between the sculpture and nature will totally depend on the wind, the sun, the tide, the currents, wildlife and flora.
The coral implementation done directly on the artwork will hopefully grow through months and years, gradually modifying the visual aspect, shapes and colours, of the architectural screens of my Ocean Utopia.
The meaning of art whelms with the meaning of nature.