Le discret et le continu

This resin casting is the result of the slow pouring of water through a bed of silica and present the frozen image of a liquid continuum.  The subtle forms as much as the traced lines seem to be the emanation of an intelligence of water, a deep network of neurons, a self-generated sculpture which responds to it own logic.  Equally taking interest in the miniature and the maquette, this work pursues research initiated in older works such as États Inversées (Inverted States) or Inframince Mont-Blanc (Mont-Blanc Infrathin).

This resin casting is the result of the slow pouring of water through a bed of silica and present the frozen image of a liquid continuum.  The subtle forms as much as the traced lines seem to be the emanation of an intelligence of water, a deep network of neurons, a self-generated sculpture which responds to it own logic.  Equally taking interest in the miniature and the maquette, this work pursues research initiated in older works such as États Inversées (Inverted States) or Inframince Mont-Blanc (Mont-Blanc Infrathin).

This resin casting is the result of the slow pouring of water through a bed of silica and present the frozen image of a liquid continuum.  The subtle forms as much as the traced lines seem to be the emanation of an intelligence of water, a deep network of neurons, a self-generated sculpture which responds to it own logic.  Equally taking interest in the miniature and the maquette, this work pursues research initiated in older works such as États Inversées (Inverted States) or Inframince Mont-Blanc (Mont-Blanc Infrathin).

Mu echoes the fallen angel of Nagasaki (which constitutes an other artwork from the artist), as it shows the deserted form of an animal already gone: not a ghost, just an envelope. This cicada sloughing in a macroscopic view reveals its inanimate character through the transparency of its previous skin, like a dead body, as a continuity which dissolves or reconstructs itself.

L'Ange de Nagasaki is a photography of the statue damaged by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki 9 August 1945.  In the past it made up an integral part of the Urakami cathedral.  This angelic face was offered as a symbol of peace by the Japanese government to UNESCO in 1976.  It was subsequently placed in the institution's gardens in Paris.  The original statue is therefore  a document and a monument at once in that it was a direct witness to the atomic cataclysm and in the fact that the scars related to this event confer to it a powerful symbolic significance.  A monument then which remembers itself.

Kintsugi is a reconstitution of a statue damaged by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki 9 August 1945. The truncated face of the Angel of Nagasaki is reconstituted here by the artist who presents the half of it that has been destroyed.  Produced in a block of white marble, this missing piece potentially repairs the figure of the Angel; it is a spectral and celestial alter ego of the human figure.

With these series of sculptures, Julien Discrit develops research where the materials and forms are intimately intertwined. He pursues two reflections very important in his work: one on the minerals, crystals and stones, and another on the spatial, geological and temporal relationship between humankind and its environment. Like future fossils, these sculptures of human hands holding rocks represent an almost archaic gesture of gripping. In a snapshot, they propose a "becoming stone" that plays with both materials - organic and mineral mixed together in yet another piece made of reconstituted stone - but also with artistic and historical practices in the sense of inventing a contemporary aesthetic from an artificial archaeological ruin. It thus reveals the aesthetic forms already given in our environment like these stones which are in themselves finished sculptural forms.


- Le discret et le continu, Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou, Paris, France, 2018

With these series of sculptures, Julien Discrit develops research where the materials and forms are intimately intertwined. He pursues two reflections very important in his work: one on the minerals, crystals and stones, and another on the spatial, geological and temporal relationship between humankind and its environment. Like future fossils, these sculptures of human hands holding rocks represent an almost archaic gesture of gripping. In a snapshot, they propose a "becoming stone" that plays with both materials - organic and mineral mixed together in yet another piece made of reconstituted stone - but also with artistic and historical practices in the sense of inventing a contemporary aesthetic from an artificial archaeological ruin. It thus reveals the aesthetic forms already given in our environment like these stones which are in themselves finished sculptural forms.

With these series of sculptures, Julien Discrit develops research where the materials and forms are intimately intertwined. He pursues two reflections very important in his work: one on the minerals, crystals and stones, and another on the spatial, geological and temporal relationship between humankind and its environment. Like future fossils, these sculptures of human hands holding rocks represent an almost archaic gesture of gripping. In a snapshot, they propose a "becoming stone" that plays with both materials - organic and mineral mixed together in yet another piece made of reconstituted stone - but also with artistic and historical practices in the sense of inventing a contemporary aesthetic from an artificial archaeological ruin. It thus reveals the aesthetic forms already given in our environment like these stones which are in themselves finished sculptural forms.

This artwork is the moulding of a mirror, in its frame as a reflective surface. By apprehending this object in its entirety, it becomes an attempt to imprint a reflection.
Testimony of the inability to transcribe this phenomena, the artwork emphasizes on the essence which is the non-existent, the emptiness, the impossible.