Plasma review – Post_Production 2021 at Frac Occitanie Montpellier

Until February 19, 2022, the Frac Occitanie Montpellier presents “Bilan plasma”, a collective exhibition with Cassandre Fournet, Valentin Martre, Clément Philippe and Thomas Stefanello for the sixth edition of the Post_Production program.

Emmanuel Latreille, director of the Frac, curator of the exhibition begins his introductory text with these lines:

“Under a title ironically inspired by scientific or medical formulations, the Bilan Plasma exhibition stages various “constructions” by means of which contemporary artists question the relationship we have with the world. sometimes be exhibited with the means (instruments, devices, methods) that account for its production process: because it is basically the latter that explains its raison d'être, the values ​​it carries, the questions it would like to create with regard to society and human customs. »

The Frac exhibition space in Montpellier is in fact occupied by three “constructions” which are staggered in its depth and which you have to enter.

On the left, Valentin Martre has built a gallery plunged into darkness that diverts the windows of shopping centers or museums to present a series of enigmatic stones (Trépuscule rocheux, 2021).

In the center, Thomas Stefanello has turned over a construction trailer which, he says, has been put to rest (Somnium, 2021)

In the background, Clément Philippe has set up a researcher's tent (SecConfinement: Camp Alpha, 2021)

The paintings and drawings of Cassandre Fournet try to echo through their subjects the installations of the three other artists.

The coherence of all the exhibited works and the obviousness of their spatial layout give "Bilan Plasma" an undeniable strength where the various proposals "far from excluding each other, coexist and reinforce each other"...

For Post_Production 2021, as Emmanuel Latreille rightly points out, "the Frac's exhibition space in turn becomes an "other" place in which its usual function of "presentation" is not reduced to enjoyment aesthetic (the beautiful, or the mimetic function), but collaborates in the dimension of production itself”…

Like last year, four critical texts were commissioned for “Plasma Bilan”:

Should we add that "Plasma assessment" requires a visit to 4, rue Rambaud in Montpellier?

Read below a report of the visit, the presentation text of the curator of the exhibition and some landmarks on the itineraries of Cassandre Fournet, Valentin Martre, Clément Philippe and Thomas Stefanello. These documents are taken from the press kit.

Remember that the Post_Production program is carried out in partnership with art schools in Occitanie: Pau-Tarbes (ÉSAD Pyrénées), Nîmes (ésban), Montpellier (MO.CO. Esba) and Toulouse (isdaT). The scholarship offered by their home school and the exhibition at the Frac Occitanie Montpellier aim to promote the professional and artistic integration of young graduates (DNSEP).

Find out more:On the Frac Occitanie Montpellier websiteSee Emmanuel Latreille's conversation with the four artists of “Bilan plasma” on the Frac Occitanie Montpellier YouTube channelFollow Frac Occitanie Montpellier news on Facebook and InstagramOn the website by Cassandre Fournet, Valentin Martre, Clément Philippe and Thomas Stefanello

​"Plasma Review": Views of the exhibition

​Valentin Marten – Rocky Twilight, 2021 – Foamy Globe, 2020 and Vertical Formation, 2021

It's with a lot of pleasure and interest that we find Valentin Martre whose work we were able to appreciate in Marseille at the Galerie de la Scep, at Vidéochroniques and for the last edition of Arts Éphémères.

With Crépuscule rocheux (2021), he presents a major installation of “Plasma Bilan”. Enigmatic and seductive, it is probably the one that most catches the eye of the visitor while leaving him in a disturbing uncertainty.

In a space plunged into total darkness, ten samples of “minerals” are exhibited in a subtly lit showcase where white light, black light and total black alternate… Strange phenomena of photoluminescence (fluorescence and/or phosphorescence) appear on the surface of the cuts made on these rocks... On some, you can see lines and hollows that make you think of coded messages inspired by cuneiform writing or traces of printed circuits...

In this scenographic device common in mineralogy galleries, it takes some time to understand that Valentin Martre is playing with our fascination and our credulity...

These samples are not rocks, but plaster casts made with fluorescent strontium aluminate pigments. These rare earths are essential elements for the manufacture of computer components. Their extractions present numerous and often catastrophic environmental impacts.

We find these clever combinations of stones and printed circuits in the two pieces of Electronic Cup (2021), stuck in the picture rails outside...

Through these fictional prisms, Valentin Martre invites us to question the link between computer science and geology... Should we conclude, as Karin Schlageter does, that "these works (...) enjoin us to think of a new paradigm, to renegotiate our place in the world, in collaboration with the elements that surround us and of which we are a part”?

A little further on, on the left, Valentin Martre presents Globe écumeux (2020), a singular sculpture made separately from a PVC swimming pool filter which he transforms into an astonishing lacework after having pierced it with hundreds of holes...

The shavings that result from this operation were then amalgamated using a heat gun to create "a flexible expanse similar to a whitish foam".

For the artist, "this sculpture is like a reflection on Russell's set theory which questions the interaction that the elements can have between them in a whole with unknown limits"... In his portfolio, he adds that it "functions as a possible application of the theoretical principle of 'equivalent exchange' that one finds in alchemy and that I use here through plastic recycling (based on the balance and the exchange that principle can be explained by: the creation of a new object requires a sacrifice of equivalent value)”…

In the center of the exhibition space, a third piece by Valentin Martre hangs from a beam. Vertical formation (2021) is composed of a metal tube on which crushed ferrite magnets are stuck, partly recovered from electronic waste (audio speakers).

The idea of ​​this kind of stalactite is intimately linked to Rocky Twilight… Here, these ferromagnetic ceramics (obtained by molding under high pressure and at high temperature iron oxide, manganese, zinc, cobalt, nickel, etc.) return to their original form as minerals.

With the three pieces he exhibits in “Bilan Plasma”, the artist expresses “the idea that all objects will again become natural elements over time, and that ultimately all the things that surround us are part of of the same family of the tangible”.

​Thomas Stefanello – Somnium, 2021

At the center of the exhibition space, Thomas Stefanello turned over a construction trailer which he said he put to rest. Inside, but also around it, he presents a set of sculptures, wooden scaffolding, a video and a few objects that form an installation.

In the center of the hut, the scaffolding serves as a support for the exhibition of elements that evoke the work and the construction site.

From top to bottom, we first discover pieces of cinder block accompanied by a calendar illustrated by the photo of a naked woman and a partially unrolled sheet of lead on which rests a pasty mass composed of balsam resin , petroleum jelly and beeswax.

Above this fragrant mass, a crowbar, finely sculpted in marble, is held by a strap... Should we see in this strange pendulum any threat, an echo of the experimental device designed by Foucault or the evocation of an episode from Umberto Eco's novel?

Two joined boards support a hard hat, also carved from marble, and a pair of roughly molded latex gloves. Their dark red color should lighten and approach that of the combination suspended in the heights of the scaffolding.

A short video, Workers, is projected onto a sheet of lead hanging from the back wall of the trailer.

Outside, two concrete gloves are trapped in a steel chain hanging from the ceiling of the Frac.

For Thomas Stefanello, his installation "corresponds to a questioning of the relationship of the individual to work, to the production system where you have to be economically profitable, where there is no room for dreams". We then understand why the title, Somnium was chosen... If we refer to the Gaffiot, this Latin word indeed means dream or dream...

In his interview with Emmanuel Latreille, Thomas Stefanello adds: “The objects are everyday objects of the working world that I relate to the Workers video. The challenge for me, through the technique and the materials used, is to question their status, to question their emotional charge... It is also to remove the texture of the object to transform it and that it becomes a generator of thoughts »…

"For me, he says, the trailer turned on its back evokes a relic at rest". This evocation raises questions until the moment when we discover in Stefania Caliandro's text that the artist has a career as a stonemason, specialist in cathedrals, which has deeply marked his imagination... which would not be unrelated to the genesis of Somnium. Several elements of his installation then take on another dimension… We could see a sort of votive altar in it, reminiscent of certain “monuments” by Thomas Hirschhorn…

​Clément Philippe – SecConfinement: Camp Alpha, 2021

The back of the Frac exhibition space is largely devoted to an imposing installation by Clément Philippe, SecConfinement: Camp Alpha (2021 ).

Camp Alpha presents itself as a scientific facility that seems to have been recently abandoned… Entering a first greenhouse, we discover in a bluish light: a laboratory, topographic maps, a camp bed equipped with an emergency blanket . Two Emergency Food Ration NRG-5 relief rations in their bowls… Sample bags are piled up everywhere.

In a second, smaller greenhouse, pieces of rock covered in a fine blue dust were carefully vacuum-packed and placed on shelves.

Outside, two benches surround the remains of a log fire. A half-open crate reveals weapons. On its cover, the pictogram "Danger explosives" accompanies the symbol "Nuclear - Radioactive materials" which is found everywhere, including on a flag which "floats" at the end of a pole and where one can read "Dry . Confinement” and the motto “Semper chrysalis”…

At the entrance to the large greenhouse, on a camping table, a video will evoke memories for those who have visited La Panacée in recent months...

Indeed, Camp Alpha extends or completes the installation it presented as part of SOL! The biennial of the territory, proposed by the curatorial team of the MO.CO. Several elements of Section Confinement: Remède MK I (2017-2021) should join the Frac during a performance across the city after the end of SOL!…

On social networks, Clément Philippe describes it as follows:

"A habitat designed to be transportable in a wooden box, to which it is possible to attach wheels, Camp Alpha allows the identification of the rocks removed and their encapsulation under vacuum with the addition of Prussian Blue".

Entirely imaginary, inspired by science fiction and video games, Camp Alpha is part of a long-term project, Sec.Confinement, where Sec can be interpreted as section, sector or security.

For this work, the primary material consists of waste rock from former uranium mines and Prussian blue. A dark blue pigment used in paint, Prussian blue, often considered the first modern synthetic pigment, is also used to treat human or animal contamination with radioactive cesium and food poisoning with thallium. It is part of the "countermeasures" that could be implemented after a major nuclear accident...

In the Sec.Confinement project, Clément Philippe offers with humor and irony a derisory use of Prussian blue to heal the landscapes scarred by the exploitation of former uranium mines and in particular in Lodévois... In his conversation with Emmanuel Latreille, he does not fail to add that this use of pigment would tend more to contaminate the premises than to repair the damage...

After having evoked the Atmospheres of Judy Chicago and the performances of Francis Alÿs, before concluding by quoting Marcuse and Walter Benjamin, Grégoire Prangé rightly remarks in his text written for “Bilan plasma”:

“If art can’t save the world, maybe it can still help us grow. We then come back to the Semper Chrysalis inscribed on the flag: the installation becomes a capsule, a cocoon in which we transform ourselves into chrysalises, by becoming aware of larvae becoming butterflies — this last stage of development of Lepidoptera which is also called imago , image — it is perhaps the awakening that art allows”.

​Cassandre Fournet – Acrylics on canvas and drawings, 2016-2021

The hanging tries to create echoes between the paintings and drawings of Cassandre Fournet and the "constructions" of the other three artists.

At the entrance, the face-to-face between Troglodyte (2016) and the white walls of the installation Crépuscule rocheux by Valentin Martre is undoubtedly the best success.

With less force, the dialogue continues between the two paintings by Cassandre Fournet (Open Doors, 2019 and Import-Export, 2020) and the Foamy Globe by Valentin Martre.

Around Thomas Stefanello's Somnium, the conversation is a little more exhausted with Post Confinement Vacations (2020) and the 14 small paintings of Alphabet (2021).

At the back of the room, it is difficult to find what can connect the painting Parc du labyrinthe (2017) and the six drawings from the Adventices series (2021) to Clément Philippe's installation.

Cassandre Fournet’s “everyday archeology” probably deserves another context to be fully appreciated…

​"Plasma balance": Presentation text by Emmanuel Latreille

Humanity has entered the era of balance sheets: establishing reports, aligning data, arranging experiences, classifying criteria , base the accounts, compare the spreadsheets, label the blobs and take stock (without bickering). “What about plasma? There are two kinds: that of the world, that of bodies. The first is gaseous in nature, it is the fluid of positive ions and negative electrons that circulates in the universe. The second is the blood liquid in which the cells of organisms bathe, our “true internal environment”. Both designate that which envelops, that which guarantees constant warmth, that which feeds, nourishes, sustains or invigorates. to plunge beings back into these plasmas essential to the regeneration of their vitality? It takes method, high-precision instruments and vigorous determination. Method, precision and determination can be felt in the work of Cassandre Fournet, Valentin Martre, Clément Philippe and Thomas Stefanello. The materials, for the three sculptors, are the subject of long applications, in detailed, well-defined environments, in order to reproduce the circulation of forces, to confront mineral concentrations, to unlock granite compactions, to pulverize outdated sedimentation. The tools are themselves traversed by the energies they generate: because how could what would be inert give life, lead to emotion, overflow? Cassandre Fournet's paintings do not describe these same sites, they make them sing in solid colors and are of the same immateriality as the interstitial plasma where all our flappy molecules snort... Sharpness of the writing, accuracy of the hammered shapes, sharp edges rays, shards of broken elements, plastic opigmentary holes, suspended explosions… May Bilan Plasma open the white book of a less dry world!Emmanuel LatreilleDirector of the Frac Occitanie MontpellierCurator of the exhibition

​Cassandre Fournet

Born in 1992, Cassandre Fournet lives and works in Toulouse and Nantes. Graduated from isdaT – Higher Institute of Arts and Design of Toulouse in 2017.https:// www.cassandrefournet.fr/

​Cassandre Fournet and the Archeology of Everyday Life: A text by Jérôme Carrié

Cassandre Fournet's work strives to represent details to which we give little importance during our daily trips. At first glance, a paradox emerges from his works between the patient plastic construction of the image and the fragile reality that it describes. Through the technical mastery that characterizes them, his works give value to these secondary and insignificant details at first glance: abandoned places, dilapidated walls, signs, panels, warehouses, spaces under construction, graffiti, plants growing in the cracks of the bitumen... From these almost nothings from his urban wanderings, the artist literally performs a "transfiguration of the banal", to use the title of Arthur Danto's book. Each painting is the result of an important work of observation , study, preparation and composition. From the sensitive encounter with the places, the artist extracts a photographic documentation which makes it possible to fix the index of a unique moment. From scouting to shooting, from photography to digital processing, from digital to drawing, from drawing to colouring, the artist composes his works in one movement. The texture of the surfaces, the rendering of the materials, the extreme attention given to each part of the composition produces a strikingly realistic effect. With the pictorial means of her own, the meticulous work of Cassandre Fournet manages to make the places present in all their materiality and invites the viewer to feel the different dimensions of time that emerge on the surface of things. In his watercolors in particular, the transparency creates a foliation that reveals the construction lines of the drawing. This braiding of above and below induces an analogy between the objective data of the landscape and the process of artistic elaboration itself. The recent works of Cassandre Fournet propose to isolate elements of the urban landscape by arranging them on a colored background monochrome. The Alphabet series proceeds by extraction, sampling, clipping, typology. In a pale yellow, the solid background evokes the color of the masking tape used by the artist which allows him to make reservations. The use of flat areas establishes a dialectical relationship between the visual device of the representation, the plastic dimension of the object and the immaculate surface of the support. Cassandre Fournet constructs his plastic language with an astonishing economy of means. Proceeding in sequences and series, the artist follows strict protocols while very freely adapting his technique to the motif or format of the work. By the choice of his subjects, his pictorial art makes us attentive to the edges, to the most fragile objects, to the most volatile places, to the most delicate nuances. His transient landscapes evoke the nostalgia of ruins, the dimensions of the ephemeral and the fleeting, inviting us to a sort of poetic archeology of everyday life.

​Exhibitions

Upcoming – La Filature, national scene of Mulhouse, with Gaëtane Verbruggen (winner of the Filature Mulhouse019 prize), 2021– Exhibitions outside the walls at Martres Tolosane with PAHLM and the composerPatrice Soletti, 2020– CRAC 2020 – Biennial of contemporary arts, Champigny-sur-Marne, 2020– Almost nothing, CIAM La Fabrique – Center for contemporary arts of the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, December 2019– PASSAGE, Abbaye de Léhon, as part of of the residency at the Ateliers du PlessixMadeuc (with Coline Casse), December 2019– Biennial of young contemporary creation Mulhouse019, 2019– 22nd Meeting of contemporary art, Château Saint-Auvant (87), 2018– CLIFFHANGERS, Espace d'art Contemporary Place-Common, Toulouse (31), 2018

​Valentin Martre

Born in 1993, Valentin Martre lives and works in Marseille. Graduated from ésban – Nîmes School of Fine Arts in 2017.https://valentinmartre.com/

​Valentin Martre, Everything is transformed or deformed, even informs it: A text by Karin Schlageter

A pair of lively and alert eyes rummages in the landscape. Her gaze wanders, but she is not lost. This look scans the city to detect what has value for him. He clings to the small details. It's the kind of sharp look that can distinguish each gravel from its neighbour, the uniqueness of each blade of grass. Those eyes, in fact, are hands. Who touch the real, caress the velvet of another skin, and who quiver when feeling the grain under the pulp of the fingers. Touching with the eyes. These eyes, therefore, glean little bits of the world. They order the hands, which in turn seize these nothings, and stuff them at the bottom of the excavations: scaffolding protection net, printed circuit board of an electronic device, filings, the remains of an insect. At the end of the day, the gleaner returns his pockets and spreads their contents before him. He contemplates the amassed treasure of all these nothings that are not nothing. Then comes the stasis of a suspended moment, the moment when it freezes, and when the eyes are sunk in the contemplation of these objects. Another rhythm, another choreography. The pair of eyes that have stopped on an object now search it with their gaze, thoroughly, to the very bottom. Hypnotized as if by a fractal vision, the eyes plunge into a scopic vortex. Time and space seem distorted and the gaze plunges into a parallel dimension, a breach that the sculpture opens up in our perception of reality. Our eyes look at what Valentin Martre's eyes have seen and what his hands have contrived, tinkered and arranged. At first glance, familiar shapes and recognizable objects in which other shapes, other objects intertwine. The sectional view is recurrent. Space is polarized, magnetic. Talkative matter demonstrates its versatility, its ability to metamorphose. The intervention of a human hand on these artifacts is always tangible. They seem to be the place where a curiosity comes to be satisfied, an irrepressible desire to see things through, to dissect, to try to understand “how it works”. The slice, the separation and the classification are gestures which irrigate the History of natural sciences, govern the spirit of the Museum, and say in subtext the exploitation of natural resources, the domination of the human over the non- human. In the formal vocabulary deployed by Valentin Martre, there is something wrong, there is “something” that suddenly makes us zoom out and take a step back. We stumble upon this quasi-scientific and polished universe. Looking closely, we are faced with special effects, inventions. Valentin Martre tampers with reality, he distorts data and invites us to question the scientific organization of the world that is so familiar to us. These works which hybridize the biological with the technological, the “natural” with the cultural, enjoin us to think of a new paradigm, to renegotiate our place in the world, in collaboration with the elements that surround us and of which we are a part.

​Group exhibitions – Recent selection

– Metazoaire, Ephemeral Arts 2021, White House Park, Marseille, May 2021 – Curated by Isabelle Bourgeois and Martine Robin– GR57, Atelier Vé, Marseille, September 2020 – La Karma, Talus The collective garden, Marseille, August 2020– The sample of a garden, Galerie de la Scep, Marseille, October 2019 – January 2020 – Curators Diego Bustamante and Aude Halbert– From Anywhere To Marseille / To Anywhere, Casati Arte Contemporanea, Docks Dora, Turin, Italy, November 1-3, 2019– Inauguration of Atelier Vé, Marseille, May 2019– Présages, Le lieu multiple Montpellier, March 2019 – Curator Laureen Picaut– Magnetic South, Videochronics, Marseille, February -April 2019 – CuratorÉdouard Monnet– Tangible is the new irl, Galerie de la SCEP, Marseille, September-December 2018 – Curator Diego Bustamante

​Clément Philippe

Born in 1987, Clément Philippe lives and works in Montpellier. Graduated from MO.CO. Esba – Montpellier School of Fine Arts in 2016.www.clement-philippe.com

​Clément Philippe: A text by Grégoire Prangé

An abandoned camp, two interconnecting greenhouses, a laboratory, a camp bed, scientific equipment placed here and there, maps, the remains of a wood fire, crates and color, all over the place. In front, a flag floats at the end of a mast and bears the nuclear symbol, a title “Sec. Containment” and a motto derived from Latin: semper chrysalis. Faced with this enigmatic whole from which all human presence has completely disappeared, faced with these vestiges which refer to some post-apocalyptic universe, we wonder about the future of our own systems of society, the world in which we live, and its future development. With this work, Clément Philippe is part of a complex network of formal and conceptual references that attempt to approach the absurdity of a post-industrial world running to ruin — the butterfly always flies towards the light — and we think of installations like those of Anne and Patrick Poirier, and in particular Danger Zone (2001) which already presented to the public a makeshift camp and a question: what happened? The treasure hunt is launched. Unlike the work of the Poiriers, the structure of Clément Philippe is open to us and we are invited to enter it, to inhabit this installation, and thereby to activate the work, to put it moving. In doing so, we may put ourselves in the shoes of its inhabitants, or else play the role of investigator-witnesses in charge of understanding this story. At the heart of our questions is the paradox of Prometheus, this Titan who donated fire to humanity, and science, an ambiguous friend who could just as well lead to its downfall. Isn't that the meaning of this installation? And faced with this inexorable paradox, what attitude should we adopt? To this question, Clément Philippe responds with a poetry of the absurd, an ineffective but symbolically strong remedy. The entire camp is immersed in a bluish atmosphere — there is something of Judy Chicago's Atmospheres — resulting from a pigment he has been using for several years: Prussian blue which, made up of iron and cyanide, makes office on the body as a remedy for radioactivity. Here the wound cannot be healed by color, but in a certain way the poetry operates — as in many of the performances of the artist Francis Alÿs the gesture is vain but potentially of great power, if we know the welcome. If art cannot save the world, maybe it can still help us grow. We then come back to the Semper Chrysalis inscribed on the flag: the installation becomes a capsule, a cocoon in which we transform ourselves into chrysalises, by becoming aware of larvae becoming butterflies — this last stage of development of Lepidoptera which is also called imago , image — it is perhaps the awakening that art allows. Undoubtedly awareness will seem futile to many, and perhaps it is — finally, what can we do about it? Of this, Clément Philippe is well aware, he who immerses part of his theoretical references in the book L'homme unidimensionne by Robert Marcuse, an essay from 1964 which describes the advent of an industrial society which extinguishes in individuals all possibility of developing a critical spirit. The only remedy for this state is what he calls "complete negation", an awakening in refusal which can ultimately prove to be very fruitful, like this sentence by Walter Benjamin which closes the book: “It is only because of those who are hopeless that hope is given to us. »

​Solo exhibitions

– Horizons d'eaux #5, in duet with Marie Havel, Canal du MidiFrac Occitanie Montpellier, 2021– Du Fond et Du Jour, in duet with Marie Havel, La Mouche Art , Béziers, 2018– Duck and Cover, Espace Saint-Ravy, Montpellier, 2018– Under Destruction, Aldébaran Contemporary Art, Castries, 2017

​Group exhibitions – Recent selection

– SOL! The Territory Biennial – A step aside, MO.CO. La Panacée, 2021– Littoral, Galerie Jean-Louis Ramand, Aix-en-Provence, 2020– Maison oublie, Sometimes Studio, Paris, 2020– Matsutake, Le lieu multiple, Montpellier, 2019– Entropia, Metakultur, Kiev, 2019– Duel , Syndicat Potentiel, Strasbourg, 2019– Allotropie and Umwelten: parallel worlds, Lycée Louis Feuillade and Espace Louis Feuillade, Lunel, 2019– The permanent exhibition, La Mouche, Béziers, 2018– Humanist situation: The world, one and plural, Châteaux d'Assas, Le Vigan, 2018– Art dislocates, Arena Events, Allées Paul Riquet, Béziers, 2018– Bringing the desert to life, Aldébaran Contemporary Art, Castries, 2017

​Thomas Stefanello

Born in 1969, Thomas Stefanello lives and works in Pujols (Lot et Garonne). Graduated from ÉSAD – Higher School of Art and Design of the Pyrenees in 2017.https://www.thomasstefanello.com/

​Thomas Stefanello: A text by Stefania Caliandro

Thomas Stefanello, a graduate of the École Supérieure d'Art et de Design des Pyrénées in Tarbes, explores the affect and the energetic charge emanating from objects, even trivial ones, almost unnoticed in their daily function and, despite their labile and practice-worn value, he honors their experiential consistency.Somnium (2021) is a multi-media installation, where working tools, sculptures, video and calendar images cohabit in a precarious architecture. The construction trailer, which shelters and invites us to discover elements dedicated, in principle, to a protensive design of construction, becomes a space for the retention of an activity both remembered and imaginary, already on the way to extinction. Crossing the threshold of the barrack – as the artist calls it – the visitor picks up traces or clues of a building process, harmless and transitory, usually destined for oblivion. By reinvesting the objects and raising them to an aesthetic dimension, Thomas Stefanello indeed points to the material stratification of the labor to which they bear witness or, even, proceeds to their sculptural reproduction as if to freeze their existence. Whether in concrete or marble, a noble material par excellence, the reshaped tool is etched in time, eternizes into an expressive and precious but unusable residue, with a gesture that transforms it into a monument, an ambiguous omen of an imminent archeology. The exhalation of the smell of the balm, present in the room, stimulates the attention that we are encouraged to pay to this double face of the body of the object, whose appearance at the same time we preserve world and being prepared for a mortuary life. The objects that we abandon as soon as they are useless are, basically, the objects that survive us beyond the duration that we believe we can assign to them. The objects that prolong our actions are also the objects on which our ephemeral action is imprinted forever. A complex semantics is inscribed on their surface, with sometimes personal sometimes collective meanings, mnesic layers, not always easy to grasp, which intermingle. An in-depth work acts in the work - as in all the production of Thomas Stefanello -, a questioning on the beings and the relations which takes consistency in the plastic thickness of the forms. With experience as a stonemason specializing in cathedrals, the artist is committed to a resistance against productivity and the economy of profitability, he remakes by hand and in minute detail production objects industry that one would hardly look at. A fragmented but concise perception emerges, resulting from patient observation, where each detail condenses stories and indescribable micro-events, yet marking, in their fleeting fragility, any sensitive mind.

​Exhibitions

– Artpress Biennale – After school, Young Artists Biennale, Saint-Étienne, 2020– Mulhouse Biennale, Mulhouse 019, 2019– Meeting objects, out-of-residence exhibition, La Maison Forte, Monbalen, 2019– Stories of tires, Center for Art and Photography, Lectoure, 2016– Images of the imaginary, Massey Museum, Tarbes, 2015

​Residences

– La Maison Forte, Monbalen, Lot-et-Garonne, 2018– Traverses and unexpected events, La Chapelle-Faucher, Périgord vert, 2017– Casa Rio, Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2016