Artistic approach
If that banal, everyday object, the broom, is the preserve of the witch, it is also that of the homemaker. Fashioned from wood and straw, is it not a fragment of nature snatched from the grasslands to end up in our kitchens? In the hands of Michel Blazy, this humble tool is returned to a hypothetical state of nature: at Chaumont-sur-Loire, hundreds of brooms planted in the ground appear to have taken root. Sorghum seeds sprout from their straw heads, developing and dialoguing with the gigantic artificial foam flowers growing in a shady pond nearby. A vegetable whirlpool alongside the shrubs of the surrounding kitchen garden. Given over to the natural process of germination, the work evolves, transforming itself throughout the exhibition in compliance with the “live and let live” principle so dear to Michel Blazy. As they grow, the shoots give new life to the brooms – and so sorghum becomes a garden once again.
Biographical notes
Michel BLAZY
FRANCE
Born in Monaco in 1966, Michel Blazy graduated from the École d’Art de la Villa Arson at the age of 22. He lives and works in Île Saint-Denis in the Paris suburbs. Perhaps indirectly influenced by his father, an amateur painter, he showed an interest in art at an early age. Both a sharp observer of the real and the living and a sharp critic of consumer society, Michel Blazy has developed an “organic” work. Made from perishable everyday materials, his sculptures and installations change throughout the duration of his exhibitions. Mould, putrefaction, drying-out and liquefaction are actors in the fascinating evolutions taking place before our eyes. Making use of the simplest materials (green vegetables, wallpaper paste, dog biscuits, etc.), the artist questions the world in which we live, caught between the natural and the artificial, by leaving his compositions to the mercy of change, as unavoidable as it is brilliantly uncontrollable.
