Sculptural installation ‘Traces’ by French artist Jean-Philippe Paumier in the Webster Art Gallery

31Aug11

The Webster Leiden Art Gallery presents the first show of the new academic year. ‘Traces’, a sculptural installation by French artist Jean-Philippe Paumier, featuring a series of works described as ‘unstill life’, opening Wednesday, August 24, 5-7pm.

Here is the artist’s statement:

My interest as a sculptor focuses on fluid and powdered materials, which I use for their specific qualities of instability and fragility. I consider the process of sculpting as a temporary moment of containing or freezing a given shape or object which then dissolves and frees itself through time or natural erosion. In my work I focus on slowing down this process of dissolution.

Traces refers to the process of creation and materialization. All of the works here have been obtained through casting or compacting, or distributing a raw material.

Fossil Sounds, made of plaster, plays fragments of a sort of reversed, negative music. Sweet Light deals with the metaphorical materialization of light poured on the floor, and Pure, while made of edible flour, is not at all consumable as such. In this show, I have worked to offer visitors insight into process, an experience of reflection on time and duration.

The work is momentary and fragile, and represents a sort of ‘’unstill’’ life.

~Jean-Philippe Paumier