De la pierre,
nous vous verrons marcher
Pierre Duval, Prix AMMA
Curated by Yann Toma
Exhibition from April 17 to May 13, 2023
"From stone, we will see you walking" is a photographic restitution of the work "To our Grandfathers".
'À nos Grands-Pères' is a work created over a period of three months from August to October 2021. The raw materials used are empty cans that come from my grandfather’s inheritance.
The latter died in the 90s and these boxes were waiting in the attic. Otherwise, I remember the exchanges with my paternal grandfather and our common taste for long walks in the forests. Long walks inspired me this pattern of the heap of leaves, piles formed by the work of the wind. On the other hand, an inheritance was left to me: crates of old cans, unused, belonging to my grandfather. Having more than 30 years of age, these cans allowed me to create a modular sculpture. Like stone becoming dust, the pile of leaf is doomed to decompose. One of the oxidation properties of tinplate is blackening over time, so this work is in some way destined to die symbolically. Through the use of this metal, the decomposition time is prolonged and allows to pay a final tribute to the memory of my departed grandfathers. The pile of leaves becomes a form of vanity between landscape and still life, echoing our own cycle. A work still alive.
Pierre Duval
Restitution of a memory tracking, "From stone, we will see you walking" is a silent tribute to both the grandfathers and this generation of students who will no longer leave the University. The work, preceded by the Saint Jacques hall which bears the names of students who died for France, is concretely part of the architecture dynamic of Sorbonne Art Gallery, making the passage a space of movement and transmission. Along the corridor stretches a carpet of metal sheets in nine photographs that refuse static contemplation in favor of reception through movement, necessary to appreciate its entirety.
The act of walking is accompanied by that of inheritance. Each leaf, singular in the work of its twists by the hand of the artist, represents an individuality, a metaphor behind the young people who preceded us in this historic place. This journey of tinplate forms, in fact, the foliage of a family tree with a temporality set by the photographic act. Indeed, if the destruction by the oxidation of metal is a characteristic of the original work, the photographic shot contradicts the course of the natural process. This interruption of the work by the image is as definitive as are the names engraved in the marble of the commemorative plaques. The spectator passes by and overtakes them, continuing the hindered act of the life on the run.
In a true dialogue with the site, the work of Pierre Duval restores form and composure to phantom identities, thus continuing his approach of work that revolves around the persistence in the phenomenon of the disappearance of things.
Amélie Boulin
Pierre DUVAL, born in 2000, is an artist, curator and stage designer. He lives and works in Paris. His poetic approach, of Still Life ("Still Living") is part of our unstable present and questions about extinction. Working with different mediums, such as video, drawing, performance, sculpture, the artist approaches it through vanity, still life and landscape. In his work, personal and collective memory is symbolized by the use of mediums or everyday objects, with a desire for "destruction" in the process. He transcribes spaces where works can dialogue and debate each other. His work poetically reflects the chaos facing our time, in the face of a complex past and a future bathed in uncertainty.
