Artistic approach
"Imaginary quests where nature rids itself of form. Unknown faces appear through the water prism. Treeless forests and forestless trees. Airless skies with wrinkled clouds. Worlds in motion eloquent with the presence of plant life, light and air. United in a ballet celebrating a poetry of the transitory.
Walking alone across virgin lands. I gather a few images in Mount Lozère’s forests. Glimpses of a private watercourse where life flows unsubdued. Water sometimes still, providing me with mirrors in dialogue with the surrounding peaks. Sometimes intoxicated, staggering with trickles of laughter, pouring its limpid treasures onto the light, discreet mosses of Verlaine’s sweet song. The elements bathe me with their presence. I capture their reflections before the moment passes. Evanescent mosaics of light. Silence at play.
The sky overflows with life as it plunges into the water. It bathes there like an unruly child. Wrinkles. Puckers. Runs until it’s gasping for breath. Studs itself with stars. Escapes between two clouds. Comes flooding back on the burning sun. And opens wide on the abysses that reflect it. Whispering to us that water and sky will always be the performers of the most aerial of choreographies. That of passing time”. Stéphane Guiran
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Stéphane GUIRAN
FRANCE
© DR
Stéphane Guiran was born in Var, France, in 1968. He lives and works in Eygalières and Barcelona. An ESSEC graduate, he left the world of graphics in 2001 and turned his hand to sculpture.
From 2002 to 2011, most of his works were created from steel lines, in keeping with his early years as a graphic artist. In 2004, he learned the ropes of casting during a year’s residency in Barcelona, which opened the way to monumental sculpture. The pared-down lines of the work he produced during this period evoke an imaginary form of writing unfolding in space, often inspired by Japanese calligraphy and haikus.
He joined the Alice Pauli gallery in 2011 and started exploring other mediums, photography first of all, around the reflections captured in the “Symétries” series. Then glass and crystal, which rapidly took on a predominant role in his work. Crystal led to more organic shapes, largely inspired by his close relationship with nature. He employs crystal in a range of contemporary expressions: as recycled material through his work on cullet, as pixel or design element, and in dialogues with natural crystals and other crystalline stones.
Nature and abstraction live in his work like the two sides of a single mirror. His latest creations meld his sculptural work with his interest in images through installations combining crystal and video, in which he seeks to involve the onlooker in the feelings that crystals arouse in him.