RIEU Jacques, sculpture, permanent artist of Galerie Capazza since 2006

Exhibitions

How to choose a particular bone and sublimate it

Approach of my work as a sculptor - Jacques Rieu

My plastic research is about the mystery of creation and the one of the animal diversity with its characteristics.

At first, I study the mechanics of the bodies, the structure and the architecture of the bones that I collected during my travels or my meetings.
Some bones particularly attract me and hold my attention.
The skull, which is the most complex form of bone, in particular the receptacle of the five senses, was my first subject of study. It can even be associated with locomotion linked to the position of the occipital hole.
I widened the field of my research to all the other bones (long bone, short bone, vertebrae, wishbone, astragalus, sphenoid...) and thus constituted a library of forms linked to a function which are for me the expression of a natural beauty. 

Just as Darwin - in particular with his finches of the Galapagos Islands which led him to his theory of the evolution - I study several individuals of the same species to invent a specimen that the direct size will make remarkable.

This idea of sculpture, I confront it with different materials (wood, stone, earth).
The disproportion and the properties of these materials lead this work of direct size to aesthetic surprises, another glance and a singular abstraction:
- a dog's shoulder blade becomes the coat of Saint Roch in Cuban mahogany
- a chicken wishbone turns into a stainless steel arch
- an equine cervical, an endless column...

Inscribed in a dynamic of the celebration of life, these sculptures of naked stone are looked at as counter-vanities.
They remind us all of our fossil eternity.

Anchored in the Green Perigord, I dialogue with all that nourishes and perpetuates this mystery: 
- the caves (evoking the history of before, anthropological manifestation of the links which unite the man and the mother earth)
- prehistory, at the crossroads of science and art (Callipyge Venus, carved stone, tools…)
- the forest (refuge of the living, the wild and the sacred in our collective memory)
- the fauna, the flora and the Dronne, the source of life.