Before: I had a bitter childhood. Even in good families, terrible things happen sometimes. But surprisingly when you look at my teenage drawings, you can see the foundations of what my art is today.
Freedom (1983-1992): Still underage, I move 1,000 kilometers away from home to study architecture at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Finally I discover that sculpture is my way and follow the classes of Jean-François Duffau. He was the modeling teacher at the Beaux-Arts but was also closely working with Cesar. Those were years of revelations, work, freedom, parties, drinking, love stories, laughter and of course, a few tears.
After (1993-1997): There comes a time when we need to resign ourselves to becoming an adult. I move to Barcelona and begin working in editing and communications whilst searching for my own style and technique. In my studio, I’d spend my evenings, late nights and weekends working relentlessly on anatomy and most importantly experimenting with different materials.
Metal (1997-2008): I explore what would later be called upcycling, by focusing on utilitarian, recycled pieces of metal such as bottle caps, cola dosers, metallic chains and DVD/CD disks. To reveal their intrinsic beauty I would make people wear them. At that point I was already exploring the idea of duality, duality between the reality of the object and the pre-conceived notions attached to it. I worked nearly ten years on this project, alternating between catwalks, trade shows and TV programs until one day monotony reared its head. Others were already exploring this idea anyway, and I’m fine with that. Personally, I needed to dare to finally spread my wings in broad daylight.
Leaving again (2009): There were cities for every major milestone in my life. Paris, the place of my second birth. Barcelona, the place to lay the structure of my thinking. Longing for a new space, I settle in Lausanne to mature.
Sculpture (2009-...): To dare be my true self, I needed to bring my sculpture out of the shadows, dare to show the results of so many years of solitary reflection and working alone in my workshop...to show you what I understood about myself, about materials, about human beings and life. A few notions continue to obsess me: Light. Because my sculptures are drawn by light and shadows. As if colours didn’t exist. But couldn’t we say that life is only a matter of light and shadows? Duality. Because good can’t exist without bad. How can I understand life without acknowledging these two extremes? The search of balance. Almost impossible unless it is in perpetual movement. And this is why my sculptures can always be read in a double emotion. Time. Because I don’t completely understand it. What does “in 5 years” actually mean? However, I consider time as a tool; a tool to heal wounds, to elaborate, to understand and learn.
Teaching: Probably the most demanding way of learning. I continue learning everyday and hope to until death. Being true to myself whilst meeting my students’ expectations.
Fire: On October 8th 2017, my workshop caught on fire. Many sculptures were destroyed and the pieces that survived the fire were ruined by the water. My heart sank but I couldn’t give up. Even if I only closed the workshop for a single day, it took me a year to really get over what happened.
Covid: (2019-2022): Daring to break marble and bring out the emotion. 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.
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