APPARITIONS
"Si Golnaz Behrouznia a une pratique du volume, c'est plutôt avec des matériaux transformés, comme les mousses, les résines, les composants électroniques. Que pourrait donc faire Behrouznia avec un matériau qu'elle n'avait pas l'habitude d'utiliser, et dont a priori elle pouvait se sentir lointaine. En voyant les œuvres créées lors de cette résidence, la réaction immédiate du public l'entraîne à comparer les œuvres à des fossiles. Comme si le travail de Golnaz avec le vivant venait s'ancrer dans une trace laissée sur la pierre, que le public découvrirait."
Présentation
"…une des évolutions du travail de Golnaz Behrouznia l'a conduite au CIRPAC, le Centre International de Recherche de la Pierre, des Arts et de la Culture. Ce centre d'art propose à des artistes contemporains de s'emparer du médium si particulier qu'est la pierre. Golnaz Behrouznia a sculpté une dizaine de pièces pendant sa résidence de trois semaines, aidée par François-Xavier Poulaillon et le plasticien Matthieu Fappani – pourrait en être l'aboutissement.
...Un corps ovoïde, percé d'une fente, qui se dresse au-dessus du socle, ne pouvant être un fossile, de par son volume, il faut bien en comprendre le sens. Il émerge clairement de la pierre brute, comme une tension du vivant pour sortir de l'inanimé, mais il ne peut pas non plus s'affranchir de la pierre. Le mouvement, figé, de l'apparition de la vie, la contradiction apparente entre la pierre et l'organique, le fait encore que le « sol » garde la trace de flagèles, ou de fils électriques, tout nous amène vers une tension paradoxale, non-résolue, entre matières inconciliables, entre temporalités divergentes. Cette œuvre ne manifeste pas une trace fossile laissée par la fiction biologique de Golnaz Behrouznia, mais illustre au contraire un développement de son travail de recherche, dans lequel le médium « pierre » vient ajouter les contraintes, et les dimensions qui lui sont propres.
Les traces de connectique dont certaines sculptures de Behrouznia sont marquées seraient ainsi la tension de la pierre vers un âge futur, qui ferait pendant à cette concrétion du passé biologique dans la pierre dure et apparemment inerte. La pierre en tant que matériau, si elle pousse Golnaz Behrouznia à repenser son répertoire de formes, l'amène aussi à résoudre les apparents paradoxes temporels dont la pratique de la sculpture sur pierre seraient handicapée. Sa fiction biologique trouverait ainsi un terrain particulièrement fécond dans la pierre – qui de par sa nature même accentue les pièges que nos sens nous tendent...
Le travail d'une artiste comme Golnaz Behrouznia se situe dans cette ligne-là, avec ses fictions biologiques, qui dépassent le temps instantané, et qui préfigurent un temps futur..."
En résidence au CIRPAC
Xavier Malbreil / Juin 2014
In residence at the CIRPAC
One of the last instalments of the work of Golnaz Behrouznia drove her to the CIRPAC, the International Center of Research of the Stone, Arts and Culture.
Looking at the works created during this residence, the immediate reaction of the audience leads to compare the works with fossil fuels. As if the work of Golnaz on the living did leave a trace on the stone that the public would discover.
The first stage of the work – where Golnaz Behrouznia carved a dozen pieces during her three weeks residence, with the help of François-Xavier Poulaillon and visual artist Matthew Fappani - could be the culmination. The forms that the artist has carved are in effect from a fictitious biological universe that she developed over the years. But are these fingerprints also something other than "evidence in the stone"? It is a question that may be asked, as it would be unsatisfactory for the mind to consider these dense sculptures, picked and concise, as only the flash-back of an existing work.
In summary, and to reformulate the question, are the stone sculptures made by Golnaz something other than traces, and do they open other doors to her practice?
Looking at two of her sculptures in white marble, this beautiful white marble from Saint-Béat, which has built its reputation since the Roman Empire, we will notice the black highlight credited to the rotring on the outline of the artwork. And in particular on this exhibit which puts face to face two of its chimeras, whose filamentous extensions clearly evoke the wired connections which our electronic devices are covered. What one sees clearly goes beyond the fossil’s domain, due firstly to these highlights, and secondly due to the intricate details within the sculpted connectique – apart from thinking that it could be traces left by a very ancient civilization, disappeared several hundreds of millions of years ago. Other carved pieces by Golnaz show that the artist has not simply reproduced her vocabulary of forms in the stone.
As a result, there is no contradiction between the stone and the living, since some formations, as the stromatolites, are coming from bacteria. And if this apparent contradiction between the stone and the living is resolved, why not solve also this apparent contradiction between the stone and electronic? Traces of connections within some sculptures by Behrouznia would then be the stone voltage in a future age, which would match this concretion of the organic past in the hard stone and apparently inert. The stone as a material, even if it pushes Golnaz Behrouznia to rethink her repertoire of forms, also leads us to resolve the apparent temporal paradoxes which the practice of stone sculpture would be disabled. Her biological fiction would be a land particularly fruitful in the stone - which by its very nature accentuates the traps that our senses offer us.
Yes, the stone is hard and seems eternal, but previously one day, it was for some of them, only a cluster of tiny bacteria producing limestone to protect themselves! This limestone, through warmings and cuts has been able to become marble. For Golnaz Behrouznia, this marble can become a communicating medium. Would then contradictions between the long time of the stone, and the short time, always shorter of computer and electronics be resolved?
We go back to the question of whether this is art, and why is it art? In the current logomachy which feed some artists and academics, according to which "the art interrogates the science", there is a lot of naivety and a lot of laziness of thought. As if writing the word "queries" sufficed to really examine. The art can question, and in a contemporary practice, it is always more interesting when it questions.
The practice of Golnaz Behrouznia, at her three weeks residence at the CIRPAC, shows how an artist can enroll in a both scientific and artistic approach, pointing the finger to apparent paradoxes, like the ones putting on the same level the long time and the short time, the mineral and the living, the natural and the artificial. The scientific thinking does not stop at appearances, but proceeds by assumptions and quantifiable and reproducible audits. When it dares to propose "fictions", it is to better understand the reality of the physical universe.
The work of an artist like Golnaz Behrouznia is located in this line, with her biological fictions, which exceed the time snapshot, and which prefigure the future time.
Is that what her art would not be, finally, a way to raise awareness about each different time scales in which we live? Does her art help us to get out of the thin capsule of the Present, in which we are imprisoned? Art reminds us of a buried reality, and frees us in bringing us to a new reality.
Perhaps that is why the stone sculptures of Golnaz Behrouznia create this feeling of recognition, because they remind us of a past time, and they call for a future time, providing an appeasement to this torture of the human conscience, who is aware of the body moving within a short time, so short, whereas the miracles of the mind open the channels of the quasi-eternity.
-----
...If the spectators realise that we speak to them about the origins of life, they also know a thing, it’s art and not science. So how, apart from the context in which we see these works - galleries, art centers - do we know that this is art, and not an anatomical plank? Some are confident that what they see is indeed the trace of a living organism. They don’t find it less beautiful or interesting, even if they see the work in an art center, they continue to believe that it is a documentation.
A good question that we could ask would be to know why it is art. As many artists use as base material the everyday’s news, for example, or nature, art can not be labelled by the real or fictitious element that inspired the work.
So let us keep in mind the answer to this question, and moving further, with Golnaz Behrouznia, at the end of a Pyrenean valley, in Saint Beat...
Xavier Malbreil / June 2014
One of the last instalments of the work of Golnaz Behrouznia drove her to the CIRPAC, the International Center of Research of the Stone, Arts and Culture.
Looking at the works created during this residence, the immediate reaction of the audience leads to compare the works with fossil fuels. As if the work of Golnaz on the living did leave a trace on the stone that the public would discover.
The first stage of the work – where Golnaz Behrouznia carved a dozen pieces during her three weeks residence, with the help of François-Xavier Poulaillon and visual artist Matthew Fappani - could be the culmination. The forms that the artist has carved are in effect from a fictitious biological universe that she developed over the years. But are these fingerprints also something other than "evidence in the stone"? It is a question that may be asked, as it would be unsatisfactory for the mind to consider these dense sculptures, picked and concise, as only the flash-back of an existing work.
In summary, and to reformulate the question, are the stone sculptures made by Golnaz something other than traces, and do they open other doors to her practice?
Looking at two of her sculptures in white marble, this beautiful white marble from Saint-Béat, which has built its reputation since the Roman Empire, we will notice the black highlight credited to the rotring on the outline of the artwork. And in particular on this exhibit which puts face to face two of its chimeras, whose filamentous extensions clearly evoke the wired connections which our electronic devices are covered. What one sees clearly goes beyond the fossil’s domain, due firstly to these highlights, and secondly due to the intricate details within the sculpted connectique – apart from thinking that it could be traces left by a very ancient civilization, disappeared several hundreds of millions of years ago. Other carved pieces by Golnaz show that the artist has not simply reproduced her vocabulary of forms in the stone.
As a result, there is no contradiction between the stone and the living, since some formations, as the stromatolites, are coming from bacteria. And if this apparent contradiction between the stone and the living is resolved, why not solve also this apparent contradiction between the stone and electronic? Traces of connections within some sculptures by Behrouznia would then be the stone voltage in a future age, which would match this concretion of the organic past in the hard stone and apparently inert. The stone as a material, even if it pushes Golnaz Behrouznia to rethink her repertoire of forms, also leads us to resolve the apparent temporal paradoxes which the practice of stone sculpture would be disabled. Her biological fiction would be a land particularly fruitful in the stone - which by its very nature accentuates the traps that our senses offer us.
Yes, the stone is hard and seems eternal, but previously one day, it was for some of them, only a cluster of tiny bacteria producing limestone to protect themselves! This limestone, through warmings and cuts has been able to become marble. For Golnaz Behrouznia, this marble can become a communicating medium. Would then contradictions between the long time of the stone, and the short time, always shorter of computer and electronics be resolved?
We go back to the question of whether this is art, and why is it art? In the current logomachy which feed some artists and academics, according to which "the art interrogates the science", there is a lot of naivety and a lot of laziness of thought. As if writing the word "queries" sufficed to really examine. The art can question, and in a contemporary practice, it is always more interesting when it questions.
The practice of Golnaz Behrouznia, at her three weeks residence at the CIRPAC, shows how an artist can enroll in a both scientific and artistic approach, pointing the finger to apparent paradoxes, like the ones putting on the same level the long time and the short time, the mineral and the living, the natural and the artificial. The scientific thinking does not stop at appearances, but proceeds by assumptions and quantifiable and reproducible audits. When it dares to propose "fictions", it is to better understand the reality of the physical universe.
The work of an artist like Golnaz Behrouznia is located in this line, with her biological fictions, which exceed the time snapshot, and which prefigure the future time.
Is that what her art would not be, finally, a way to raise awareness about each different time scales in which we live? Does her art help us to get out of the thin capsule of the Present, in which we are imprisoned? Art reminds us of a buried reality, and frees us in bringing us to a new reality.
Perhaps that is why the stone sculptures of Golnaz Behrouznia create this feeling of recognition, because they remind us of a past time, and they call for a future time, providing an appeasement to this torture of the human conscience, who is aware of the body moving within a short time, so short, whereas the miracles of the mind open the channels of the quasi-eternity.
-----
...If the spectators realise that we speak to them about the origins of life, they also know a thing, it’s art and not science. So how, apart from the context in which we see these works - galleries, art centers - do we know that this is art, and not an anatomical plank? Some are confident that what they see is indeed the trace of a living organism. They don’t find it less beautiful or interesting, even if they see the work in an art center, they continue to believe that it is a documentation.
A good question that we could ask would be to know why it is art. As many artists use as base material the everyday’s news, for example, or nature, art can not be labelled by the real or fictitious element that inspired the work.
So let us keep in mind the answer to this question, and moving further, with Golnaz Behrouznia, at the end of a Pyrenean valley, in Saint Beat...
Xavier Malbreil / June 2014
Les formes que l’artiste a sculptées sont en effet issues de l’univers de fiction biologique qu’elle tisse au fil des années. Mais ces empreintes sont-elles aussi autre chose que des « preuves par la pierre »?
C’est une question que l’on peut se poser, tant il serait peu satisfaisant pour l’esprit de considérer ces sculptures denses, ramassées, concises, comme uniquement le flash-back de l’œuvre existante.
En un mot, et pour reformuler la question, les sculptures dans la pierre faites par Golnaz sont-elles autre chose que des empreintes, et ouvrent-elles d’autres portes dans sa pratique ?»
Xavier Malbreil 2014
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Format
Créations et recherches minérales Travaillées manuellement sur galets de différentes pierres Credits Apparitions Conception et Création Golnaz Behrouznia Production CIRPAC, Centre de recheche des arts de la pierre, Mairie de Saint Béat , Commissariat Xavier Malbreil Direction résidence & soutien réalisation François-Xavier Poullaion Partenariat d'entreprise multimédia Aktis 2014 Photos Golnaz Behrouznia, Matthieu Fappani |
Residency / exhibition / show
Résidence de création -CIRPAC, Centre de recheche des arts de la pierre, Mairie de Saint Béat, Expérimentation/création avec le minéral, juin 2014 Première présentation -Exposition individuelle, Moulin de Saint Béat , Mairie de Saint Béat , sortie de résidence CIRPAC, Saint Béat 2014 Exposition -Exposition et colloque, Festival Vivant, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 2016 -Festival d'Art Contemporain Auz'Arts , 12ème édition, Espace La Durante, Auzeville Tolosane 2015 |
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