JEAN-GABRIEL COIGNET

Born in 1951 in Aurec, lives and works in Saint-Mary, Charente.

“Coignet’s forms sometimes appear to exist for their own sake, in their astonishing and solitary presence… Unless the work as a whole should be read in light of a motivated rejection of the successive forms that sculpture has taken over the last 30 years: a rejection of the banal object as sculpture, a Duchampian metaphor that has become the indigestible commonplace we know, a rejection of the organic sculpture of arte povera, a rejection of sculpture that asserts itself through the body, a body that presents itself theatrically or in the classical form of statuary.”

Excerpts from a text by Paul Ardenne

The sculptures in the "Ana" series are painted in a single color and arranged around an off-center opening. The asymmetrical base frames part of the ground on which it rests, acting as a threshold. From either end of this base rises a portico, forming an elevation. This entirely orthogonal construction, yet incorporating offsets, invites an oblique approach. Depending on their scale, these sculptures are either close to objects or approach the dimensions of a shelter, but no more, because, as Max Bill stated a few years ago during a radio broadcast, "sculpture is uninhabitable.".

Jean Gabriel Coignet