Peaceful Megastructures. Order and its antithesis – as the products of our time and the legacy of history – are an important basis for my artistic thinking and inform my work.
• The fragility of Limoges porcelain opposed to the ultra-resistant materials of 21st century buildings.
• The softness of touch [ biscuit ] opposed to the brutality of megacities.
• The delicacy of my micro-structures [ 2.5 to 35 cm ] opposed to the never-ending gigantism of modern skyscrapers.
• The faint crevices in my modules opposed to machine perfection.
• The elegance of the shades of white opposed to the darkness of our cities.
• The perfectly straight line no longer exists for me; everything is friction.
I seek the human and organic aspect – and translate it, through each of my microporcelains, into an unstable equilibrium imbued with vital force.
Tensions develop. There is the energy contained in each of the sculptures, which is its very own. There is also the spatial arrangement of the sculptures among themselves and the invisible links that arise when they gather in this way.
The repetition of gestures, as a known artistic process (Peter Dreher, Niele Toroni, Aurélie Nemours, Ad Reinhardt,…), connects me to the craftsman more than the “Machine-Man”.
The repetition paradoxically makes possible the small fissures essential to the sculptures’ uniqueness and humanity. Each micro-structure is conceived, modelled, sculpted and shaped individually.
The result is both unique and serial.
I have always been fascinated by the infinitely small. The study of scientific oversized images of titanium, silver or phosphate crystals, and crystallography, was an awakening, a revelation.
All the more so as I am familiar with this capacity for microscopic observation: myopia has given me the ability to scrutinise the almost invisible.
The structural arrangement of crystals is a miniaturised echo of the megacities as seen from the sky, a vision that equally fascinates me.
This paradoxical idea of the tiny gigantic and the gigantic tiny is at the root of my approach and of my Peaceful megastructures.
Walking through Tokyo, New York, Shanghai or Hong Kong has allowed me to appreciate the most advanced architectural projects (Supertall), while questioning the place of society in this hyper-urbanisation.
In 2030, 70% of the world’s population will be urbanised.
It is a dystopian, chaotic and alarming, yet deliberately elegant vision of the city that interests me, that raises questions – seen in the mirror of a past utopia, and henceforth without illusions. The essential question is: what is the future for our habitat? Living vertically?
Peaceful Megastructures / Chaos is a composition of a micro / giga / megacity consisting of 238 sculptures [ 240 x 80cm ], as well as smaller accumulations of 150 megastructures.
Pictures Dominique Libert
Archipelagos 