Artistic approach
"I imagined a nest made from geodes gleaned in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. Stone flowers gathered by human hands. Like poems garnered directly from the earth. From these broken geodes, a gentle purity emanates. That of quartz, keeper of murmurs. To white quartz we ascribe the magical gift of reflecting thoughts and feelings. Singing the silent words hidden within us.
A sound creation based on children’s murmurings illuminates the poetic journey.
The Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire Stables’ Indoor Arena boasts truly remarkable architecture. Anchored in the soil. It has the allure of the earthly seat of that ancient furnace in which matter once crystallised. Aerial. It has all the lightness of a cathedral whose rows of windows are open to the winds and the birds.
Assembled against a backdrop set between earth and sky, the four thousand quartz geodes become a huge amplifier of murmurs. An enhancer of silences. Let each visitor leave their dreams there, their wishes and secret fantasies. And those silences will fly away, through the open windows, blown by the wind. To reach the World’s ears. To reach the humming of the stars, which will turn them into Constellations. Weaving a map of song fashioned from cocoons of the Self. Dreams ready to hatch. To fashion a world where poetry guides its beings towards an awakening that sleeps in us all”. Stéphane Guiran.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Stéphane GUIRAN
FRANCE
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.
STÉPHANE GUIRAN
