Speeches on global warming and all the harm we’re doing to nature can turn into snooze-fests really quickly, even for those of us who care about the environment.
Therefore, the sculpture series by French artist Emeric Chantier, on nature and how humans affect it, is brilliant in its execution. His sculptures are direct enough to be clear in their purpose and yet elusive enough to draw the viewer in and provoke thought. To be faced head-on with what one’s thoughtless actions can cause, and in an artful way at that, is an inspiring experience. His use of bones and organs like the heart brings a new layer of depth to his work that is keeping in line with traditional still life paintings. Here, he represents the beauty and tragedy of nature juxtaposed against death.
The sculptures depict symbols like weapons, skulls and distorted fragments of human faces, to force the viewer to reflect on their actions. Chantier uses only everyday objects to make his elaborate, delicate pieces; incorporating dried plants with industrial and household items, held together with moulding and glue.
His simplicity adds to the meaning of his pieces according to him and his aesthetic is more dependent on the combinations of his tools rather than the tools themselves. He chooses not to lose himself in the desire for fanciful or extravagant articles, as he finds that to be the beginning of the downward artistic slope.
Chantier’s winding knots, a recurring element in several sculptures, seem almost constricting and physically painful. The melancholy expressed in his pieces is thus recognisable as raw and deeply real. His visual merging of the industrial with the natural brings out the destruction that we brush under carpets every day of our lives.
Chantier believes that for art to be tragic, it need not be on a scale larger than life, or be a great calamity. The ordinary that people don’t glance at, too, holds within itself misery yearning to be pronounced, addressed, resolved. He takes on, in his work, the responsibility to bring these issues to the forefront.
Attempting to bring a sense of urgency in his work, Chantier uses the three-dimensional form to express himself. This makes the rousing and simultaneously terrifying warning that is his work seem more tangible and the balance in his sculptures seem all the more delicate. He says in a resounding declaration of his artistic endeavour,
My work is related to the nature and the rapport that man can have with it, a confrontation to our origins, an ecological awareness of the preciousness of our ‘mother nature,’ source of all life, a subject that is dear to my heart and which I believe must be part of a collective consciousness.
Be sure to take a look at more of Chantier’s work at Empty Kingdom as well as at Macadam gallery. We promise you’ll find it hard to look away!
