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1995

Yves Guerin

Sculpture

136 x 75 x 27 cm

Having worked first with granite in his native French department of the Corrèze between 1975 and 1980, Yves Guérin decides then to draw inspiration from the ancestral forge to create shapes with railways and metallic bars. Initially used as a concept, he gives them a new orientation, modelling it.
This physical relationship is essential to the artist: “To me, material is divine. It is possible thanks to it to question oneself about infinity.” The rails have a symbolic content which evokes the “archetype of the industrial world” - to quote the artist, and the transport, the freedom and the possibilities implied with it. This kind of hippocampus combines the artisan roughness and a delicate trace, performing balance feat as if metal wasn’t metal.

Yves Guerin

France

Born in 1953

Born in Saint Privat, France

Guérintaught sculpture at the Fine Arts School in Clermont Ferrand, near his workshopand ironworks. After working with granite from 1975 to 1980, he began workingwith train-track rails. He sometimes produced gigantic works in a single piecewithout soldering. His inspiration is a traditional professionthat has almost disappeared today, the blacksmith. The breath of air, fire, andwater as well as the physical effort required for this ancient and traditionalpractice are used to produce works of pure shapes. The roughness of the forgedmaterial is a contrast to the fineness of the work, and is a response to thequestioning of balance.

Monumental sculptures produced for the towns of Thiers, Clermont-Ferrand, Riom, and La Chaise-Dieu.