Does the absurd have a that means? Maybe it’s a query of perspective. Claude Chavent was a formidable jeweler who mastered gold, silver, metal, and iron. He additionally mastered double-entendres, which he beloved to play with like throwing a bottle into the ocean. From his preliminary coaching, as a scientist, he saved seriousness and precision. From his skilled mastery got here the technical perfection and the inventiveness of the options he was looking for.
Briefly skilled in jewellery, it’s as a self-taught person who he developed his personal methods of realization. From a intelligent mixture of semi-industrial processes, he then completed his items with all of the artwork and know-how of a rare goldsmith. Because of his authentic method, he was capable of develop a really private physique of labor that he let evolve with happiness towards sculpture of gorgeous dimension.
Thanks, Claude, for the enjoyment of dwelling that you simply transmitted to us via your smiles and your artwork.
Jewellery
After we see a bit of knickknack, in gold furthermore, we consider it. The fabric is there, current, totally current, with its worth, with its that means, with this affirmation, insolent. The 2 items offered listed here are in actuality bas-reliefs, however can we converse of actuality? The reply is sure and no. With Claude Chavent, the reply is all the time sure and no. Sure, the piece is there, in our fingers, however so is the phantasm. The presence on one facet and the picture that we create mentally on the opposite, that’s the duality of our notion. Gold and iron. The valuable and instantly its antinomic. The artist, delicately iconoclastic, attracts with lightness, with an assertive line.
Sooner or later, Claude wanted to go additional. He determined to eliminate the quantity, nevertheless shallow it was, to take away this bas-relief, which lastly served solely to get nearer to a contradictory speech. Because it was contradictory, it was higher to be sincere and suggest no reduction in any respect. Sure, possibly, however the thickness of the metallic continues to be there, I stated. In fact, in fact, he stated, however think about certainly one of these pins on a bit of paper, a drawing, an image, it turns into a easy illustration. On the one hand, these pins exist in your fingers, you maintain a ball, however in actuality you solely maintain the illustration of this ball. And but you maintain it in your hand. So are you holding it or not?
Effectively, it’s time for an aperitif, let’s go and get drunk, with actuality!
The piece beneath might have been referred to as “Denial of Actuality,” however that may have been too down-to-earth. Right here the phantasm is masterful, as a result of you need to know that on this jewel, no piece is at proper angles. Every part is an phantasm, a lark, even the colour within the mirror makes the white whiter than white. And we are able to’t even share the viewpoint of the black pearl, the central actor. Our angle of view, the attitude we’ve got, actually ejects us from the image. But it’s a magnificent invitation to contemplation.
Sculptures
The change of scale submits the artist (the jeweler!) to a needed repositioning, to a redefinition of his goal. How are these items going to behave, since it’s not us who take a look at them however they who query us? A perspective which activates itself due to a motorized artifact involves disturb our spirit. To know that the sculpture is solely turning on itself whereas your mind is telling you to trip—forwards and backwards—inevitably provokes in you an abyss of perplexity. Claude’s humor turns into a critical factor.
Reversal of actuality
A jet, a rain of nails. Water drawn with iron. What a candy irony to think about that rust, for as soon as, dominates the water. And it’s once more by providing us a brand new look, a change of viewpoint, that the artist invitations us to a elementary questioning of our certainties.
The banal magnified
Ceci n’est pas une chaise, it’s only the story of a chair that reminds you that you simply had been sitting in it just a few moments earlier than. Sadly, this one solely exists in your creativeness, space-time having all of a sudden flattened out to actual measurement. And even if you’re nonetheless there (and it’s, too), one thing has modified, the previous has handed you by. And now it’s as much as you to just accept the fantastic thing about the second, the attitude that connects you to this pretty second lived and to be lived, all made doable by the artist’s gesture that connects and transforms a second into eternity.
Tor!
Sure, it’s certainly a query of passage, of opening, on this monumental work that makes us increase our eyes towards an elsewhere. Is Tor a goalpost, or a Franco-Germanic double that means, “Tor” turning into “tort” in French? It’s a new dimension that Claude imposes on us due to (or due to) this door, his final work.
Claude performed with our perceptions, placing holes the place there was nothing, placing fullness the place there was nothing both. Claude was the confederate of the abyss. The abyss took him away, Claude continues to be there.
