EMERIC CHANTIER: Definition(s)

14 Jun - 14 Jul 2018
A2Z Art Gallery is pleased to present Définitions(s): Emeric Chantier’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. This “corpus” of sculptures created by the artist, who was born in 1986 in Montreuil, puts forward the introspective feeling perceived by humans facing the origins and the future of Nature. Concurrently, he is also presenting an exhibition at the Musée de l’Homme, more specifically at the Balcon des Sciences (science balcony), until November 15th 2018.

In Définitions(s), Emeric Chantier invites us to discover sculptures of animals, faces and human bodies of all ages, with vegetal appearance, all locked up in a white box with the standard dimensions of the subject.

Since antiquity, human kind have tried to define everything they see, touch, think, hear, feel and sense. That is how the human being as a scholar (regrouping scientists, literary persons, sociologists, philosophers, etc.), lives, communicates and transmits the knowledge by locking it in singular categories, definitions, so we can all live, understand, communicate and grow up in a common environment.

Excogitatoris (“the thinker” in latin) shows us a man carved in the famous position of the Thinker of Auguste Rodin. Locked in a white box with the dimensions of an adult man, this sculpture embodies the reached climax of the Définitions(s) series. To raise our awareness, Emeric Chantier pushes the Thinker figure to examine the condition of his own definition in a symbolic and poetic way. The human thinker who raises questions about his knowledge is being trapped in his own game. What should we see in this? The irony of the human universal reflection conditioned by our own knowledge and our own needs? An example of our weakness against the Nature - our belonging - relation with this one? Emeric questions us in latin…