ÉTIENNE-MARTIN

While being of his time, but fundamentally free and independent, this untimely dreamer of matter (wood, plaster, wire, fabrics, ropes, bronze, recovered materials, paper, etc.) and form (celestial swimmer, cloak, mirror-wall, gaze-tree, trimmings, drawing wire, large couple, etc.) practiced an art that was, in the end, different and more than a sculpture: he drew, weaved, knotted, bound, composed, and architectural the object of his thought, of his desire, built by the work of the imaginary in contact with the real, sometimes going up to the fantastic.

Thus, the author of the “Demeures”, eternal inhabitant of childhood, passionate about literature, and mystical and esoteric texts, constantly sought the link between the past and the present, origin and memory, man and the universe, reality and imagination, the “tangible” and the “intangible”, heaven and earth.

Through this quest, Etienne-Martin has opened a new horizon to the field of sculpture, beyond the distinction between traditional and modern art, trying to find a “junction”, tirelessly.

Entering his work is like travelling to another time from which emanates an immemorial presence, a world where duality or division is abolished, in other words, the separated, the extremes are united, united, joined together, where art becomes another reality, not only to look, to think, but to dwell—as our understudy, as our indwelling.

Courtesy Galerie Bernard Bouche