L’Orage, 2026

A large artificial rock that dominates the assemblage is lightly touched by the plaster cast of a ballet dancer. In the foreground, scattered about on the ground lie fragments of stone and plaster, several gilt frames, and photographic panels on which the details of skies and landscapes from the reproductions of paintings by Nicolas Poussin have been applied. Another torn image, representing a partial view of the nighttime sky, is held between the cast of the figure and the dark mass.
The work was conceived for the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco which, on the occasion of the exhibition Le sentiment de la nature. L'art contemporain au miroir de Nicolas Poussin, invited the artist to confront Poussin’s painting L'Orage (The Storm, ca. 1651). The dark, dramatic atmosphere of the seventeenth-century painting was interpreted by the artist according to his own universe of thinking. The indomitable dimension of Nature and History, represented by the rock, is offset by the sublime one of Art and Beauty. The latter universe cannot be renounced, in spite of the awareness of its unattainability, as is suggested by the “stormy” explosion on the ground that disperses the One in a multitude of fragments. Similarly, the gilt frames evoke the ideal painting, which the artist has forever pursued, but that no gaze will ever be able to grasp in its entirety.