Vernissage at the cemetery

 

  In the history of the art of the burial tomb, it is today quite rare, if not almost impossible, to be able to express oneself artistically for a contemporary funerary artwork because the norms have come to constrain this ancestral expression. While we enjoy walking in our cemeteries, these new places are becoming boring. Except for "monuments to the memory of ..." or commemorations of a famous person or a dramatic event, artists have deserted this direct reflection on death and one of the traditional rites, the burial. So what a pertinent opportunity presents itself to the artist Milène Guermont when an eminent scientist, a specialist in light, commissions a tombstone from her. The commissioning person being a native of the Causses, the ancient and eroded massifs that extend to the south and southwest of the Massif Central and its neighboring "lands", it is with fiber-reinforced, ultra-high-performance concrete, one of her favorite materials, that the artist proposes the elevation of a landscape, a regeneration of Causses in twelve facets, composed of peaks, steep slopes, recesses and curious luminous underground rivers. A tomb is technically composed of three parts: the statue (upper level), the stone (the pedestal) and the sole (the base).

 

For CAUSSE, the artist succeeds in associating the stone with the statue so that it becomes one. The buffering of the black-tinted concrete, which gives it a slightly velvety zinc rendering, reinforces the identity of this powerful sculpture, which is placed on a white bush-hammered marble base, and accentuates the idea of ​​geological thrust. This telluric thrust, perhaps provoked by the penetration of these fiber-optic beams and poured into the concrete, pierces the flesh of this mountain and brings a twinkling to the shaded slopes.

 

CAUSSE is a work resulting from a cosmogonic reflection, a dialogue between photoelectricity, electrons and the sacred; nothing is easy to perceive and yet so palpable in this expression where the material made by man is rather synonymous with roughness and not finesse. So we must enter the Montparnasse Cemetery and abandon our reluctance to caress this physical elevation that is concentrated on the Land of Causses as elevated to the rank of sculpture.  

 

Yves Sabourin
Independent Curator and Inspector of Artistic Creation Directorate of Artistic Creation – Ministry of Culture and Communication of France, 2017