A book about Stéphane Guiran's sculptures: words that speak of art

Stéphane Guiran was born in 1968 (already "an event"…). His creative activity, however, is of relatively recent origin. (There again, between running other people's lives and running one's own – one sometimes has to choose.) He was looking for a way of expressing (after suppressing) his artistic sensibilities. "Sculpture gave me a voice", he writes, somewhat enigmatically; but his meaning becomes clearer when, for our benefit, under pressure, he admits: "I've spent time trying to sculpt spirit. Even attention. And words… I have at thing about words. Dressing them up. Pulling them apart. Mixing them into 'staggering' surprises." And this Artist's Book (written by the artist himself, following a year he spent living in a studio-squat in Barcelona) is indeed something of a surprise! The Artist-Writer plays brilliantly on almost every line of the stories, tales, notes and poems which, from page to page, and with discretion, accompany the photographs of his works. The depth of the meanings always combine gravity and hilarity, and recall (with recoil) Duchamp's "exquisite words", which, as Michel Sanouillet showed some time back, are "worlds away from Old Moore's Almanac"! This harks back to the quint(uplet)essence (it's essential!) of Life itself; and in fact one of Guiran's titles is "Boîte à l'Etre / Being Box".

A Jungianly dual being, comprising a "day watchman" and a "night wakener": a dashing blade (a "Blade Brother", of course) who gets paid in "dream money". Dual, also, like the sculptures – fine, slender, hieratic, spiritualistic (in the words of Gonzague, the Artist's alter ego, the child whom he introduces into some of his texts: "Hey, why these French fries?") – in which 2 types of metal are welded, milled, worked on lengthily and lovingly, hesitating between equilibrium and movement, earth and sky, shadow and light, Life and Death.

And so, after comparing himself to Prometheus (with the recurring cod liver oil of his youth) and Sisyphus, given that the production of this book was a "ball and chain" for him, and that he's now got his back to the wall (another of his sculptures is called "Fin de Moi (difficile) / End of Me (difficult)"…), he may finally be able to challenge this "Dark Vador (…) nonchalantly leaning on his scythe", and tell him (write to him, rather; it's better to hear it in written form!): "Now that we're in tales, Death, for the pen there's nothing urgent any more." Except one thing: rush off and buy/order this book, pore over it, and, above all, read it… Because, unlike the kind of book that "you forget as soon as you close it" (as the author says), this one lives on in the memory. And it will motivate new converts to seek out the "real" works of Stéphane Guiran.

The simple beauty of the full-page reproductions, the modesty of the printed "form" of the texts by comparison with the depth of their "substance", and the sobriety of the presentation, guarantee the reader an enriching experience.

At a time when flashy vacuousness is the order of the day, both in consumer behaviour and in the conventional wisdom, this book shows that an Art publication can be more than a mere promotional flyer. And especially given that, despite its apparent lightness of tone, it displays a degree of humanity that is simply, deeply moving.

Francis Parent, Novembre 2005
Art critic, member of AICA