Matière-Lumière embodies the cosmic principle of the transformation of matter trough light. This body of works traces the process of becoming matter all the way back to the origins of creation and the apparition of its forms, first in the mineral, vegetal, and animal kingdoms, and then for human beings and the universe itself.
The observation of the interaction between the four primordial elements, water, fire (sun), air and earth, has inhabited and driven my entire creative process for many years. The various phases of water which, through changing temperatures and wind, transitions from a solid state, ice, to a liquid state, water, to a gaseous state, ether, have made me realize that there is a process of silent transformation, a universal process, a quasi-mystical revelation, that manifests itself both in our deepest being and extremely far from us, at an infinitely small and infinitely large scale.
In order to manifest and translate my personal experience into a universal message I had to welcome a new form that crystallized the artistic approaches of painting, sculpture, photography, and video, bringing out their relationships and their fusion with light.
I was drawn to plastic films, magical in their fusion with the matter they cover, which go through transition phases similar to water (solid, liquid and gas). These films have the extraordinary characteristic of transforming matter through their interaction with light; they fill matter with light, creating a whole that I name Matière-Lumière (Matter-Light). Through absorption, transmission, refraction and reflection, light animates and transmutes these works into changing matters and forms, putting us in touch with the vibration of archaic times. Spirits are incarnated, appearing and disappearing in an instant. A strong link between prehistoric paintings, cave engravings with their shamanistic origins, and my prints, born of a quasi-alchemical process, has often been brought up in discussions about Matière-Lumière. Resembling monumental copper sheets, the plastic film strata become human placentae and manifest cytological and histological engravings that are visions of the origin of the world in the reflection of an unknown substance.
Moreover, there is a contemporary stake in plastic films. A testimony to our Anthropocene era, they result from the transformation of petroleum, created deep within the earth, and contain carbon, the essential core of all living matter on earth, that was born in the stars.
The original substance of these films, endlessly recycled and moving freely between species to regenerate life in a process of eternal beginning, bears the memory of hundreds of millions of years. Petroleum, which lies at the heart of the present ecological catastrophe, a well of organic carbon diverted from its role in protecting climatic equilibrium, has been transformed by humans into an inert chemical material. When I transform this material into a work of art, it is regenerated by going back to its source, and becomes organic and alive again. A transfiguration of the trauma of destruction and separation in our world, the work embodies the victory of creation over destruction, and a return to the sacred, to the source, to unity…
Although my work cannot be classified as a true successor of the Gutai movement, there have been many links established between the two. My quest is to materialize light, and, in a kind of consubstantial manner, to animate and spiritualize matter; it demands an absolute symbiosis of the artist with matter, a reconciliation of spirit and matter, a consciousness of unity. The body, which plays an important role in the Gutai movements, has become, in my journey, the guide and principle imprint in quest and in gesture, a creative force transmitted through the creative process in perpetual becoming. It is the consciousness of Matière-Lumière which guides my journey…
Once the raw substance has been reduced to its essence, it becomes the material of our own creation.