The precious power of stones! A phrase without a verb, a title phrase where everything is said. These three words need to be dissected and given meaning. The French language has this advantage, that of the sense of words.
Moreover, before economic globalization, it was the diplomatic language between European powers. What is a stone? It is symbolized by its solidity, its duration, and its eternity over time.
Matter is immortal; it regenerates, transforms, modifies, but is always there. The cornerstone, the living stone of the church of Christ, the stone, pebble rolled by the waves, but always there. Its power is above all a force of attraction, of power, and of creation. The earth is a vast stone and attracts all objects by its magnetism. A power, it is thanks to a well-chosen stone that David slew Goliath.
The sculptor uses stone to create. The stone is eternal, it is an archive of the past and teaches us what was to understand what will be. “True living memories of the planet and the universe, they suggest questioning the world past, present, and future.”
This collective exhibition showcases stone in all its forms, from the smallest grain of sand to a rock defying the laws of gravity, precious stones, matter, pieces of glass, a magnificent chandelier with a thousand sparkling lights. Glass is sand, stone, coal is a stone of carbon, the mountain is a stone, does the stone become a mountain? Every stone is a mountain in potential.
We overturn the laws of nature, there is no more erosion and the stone rises and grows. The artist questions the certainties of a society sclerosed by a single way of thinking. We must learn to relearn to imagine and dream.
About thirty artists are participating in this exhibition on stone. The public will discover the many facets of stone, its rigidity, its fragility. They will be surprised by this green sand, a pile of champagne bottles, by this toolbox where stones replace the instruments, the craftsman becoming an artist.
The imaginary and the symbolic, the mysteries of nature, ritual, study, and meditation. Nature is the frame, the subject is the question, and the object the cause.
This is the journey into a somewhat magical, unreal, and mythological world that the visitor is invited to take. The stones are the refrain, the base, the reason, and the thread of this exhibition. A stone would be the scale model of the universe, said Roger Caillois.
Stones are precious, all of them indeed, even a simple pebble polished by the sea and time. How long did it take to land on the shore? It is a memory.
The mountain stands proudly before us, it erodes and grows, it too has a memory. Stones are precious not for their value but for their timelessness. They have been there since the beginning of time and will be there at the end of time. That is their power, they are stones, rocks, cliffs, reefs, and massifs, and indestructible.
Thierry Jan
