Twenty-eight blocks stacked into a “staff,” which gives the work the suggestion of a utensil, refer to diversity, connection and perception.  The complexities of independent observation, the beauty and necessity of all kinds of diversity,  the joy of connecting with the cosmos, nature and fellow humans!

Photo: In Palais de Tokyo with Guillaume Désanges, October 16, 2024

Diversity is my starting point in 2011. The work ‘barre ronde de bois’ by Andre Cadere gave me the idea of stacking colored blocks into a staff. 

I appear in public with a staff to both present my work and commemorate André Cadere (1934-1978). He would have turned ninety this year.  His performances breathe a pleasant autonomy and are a response to his diagnosis of exclusionism in the art market.

The 28 blocks are not glued together but temporarily connected to a staff.

Each staff has a difficult-to-unravel organization and is more or less related to the surveyor’s red and white pole. The surveyor who maps earth’s surface without judgment: The art of seeing in pure form!   

A lot has remained the same since I made my first staff in 2011. First of all: the ecstasy of making; the sawing and assembling, the sanding, painting and overpainting the elements  until a chord emerges. 

While at first I was proud of not getting the wood from a construction store but cutting it myself in the forest, now I am happy because beavers throw long pieces of tree into the river for delivery to my studio.