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Alexandre Chanoine
Alexandre Chanoine makes objects with stones that are at the same time sculptures, toys and instruments. He manipulates them, jostles them, makes them ring by exploring the powers of primitive gestures — or the beginnings of erosion. Summoning temporalities that vastly exceed those of humans, where his gestures and works lie beyond any and all categorizations, Alexandre Chanoine digs a rut as sensitive as it is singular, where the infinitely old makes us hear the infinitely beautiful.
Sculptures, sound performance, 2021
This research began in 2010, when I discovered how to grain stones in the lithography studio of fine arts in Nantes. This operation consists of flattening the surface of the lithographic stone.
For this, we use two lithographic stones which are sanded one on top of the other with fine sand and water. This action may take several hours depending on the condition of the stones.
It was in this workshop that I discovered the sound that stones can produce. I already used them in my work, for their timeless presence and their shapes sculpted by the elements.
For me, they had the potential to put a certain distance.
To be able to make us doubt.
Discovering the sound produced by stones allowed me to open up my practice of sculpture.
From now on, my sculptures will be instruments, tools, that will allow me to play. The work is no longer an outcome, but a medium for playing in the present, in space.
I like the idea of works that serve to work.
What interests me is the permeability that there is between the « tools » that I make and the gestures that I discover while manipulating them. Often these discoveries first modify the objects, then the gestures are refined or transformed.
It is with these interactions that my objects take shape.
I like the idea of traveling without a goal(s), of lending an ear and a hand to what has no name.
Tinkering with something that is not of speech, of reason, that does not mean anything (not wanting to say).
I use stones as a tool of relativity.
They are taken onto a scale of time that lies beyond us so that to play with them is also to play with the idea we have of time, with our relationship to the world. In my performances, I use simple repetitive gestures like pushing / pulling, turning, swinging …
My objects serve to give enough form to sound so that we can experience something of the order of erosion.
diffusingdigitalart.org 