artist/ Graff

france

Born to a painter father and the grandson of a foundry worker, the fusion of the arts was bound to take root within him. And what about that surname that sounds like an alias! But his career has unfolded somewhat differently, between coloring, tinkering, and folding. Antoine wants to go back to his roots. No, he doesn’t want to be skilled; he just wants to make, to create.
Crumpling and smoothing out. The fold is his toy, which he teases, agitates, and shakes. Yes, this is a playful experience. But isn’t his subconscious also expressing, through this, a need to take refuge in crevices, in protective valleys?
In his work, this Hercynian folding is overwhelmingly powerful. The very same force behind the formation of several European mountain ranges, including those of Germany and the Vosges. Antoine, a man of the East, an Alsatian steeped in valleys, hills, and other mountainous formations… By structuring, shaping, and freezing his material within the fold, he relives the great upheavals of his prehistory: erosion, fractures, accidents, and excavations. His play is now tectonic, chthonic. The result is on the surface, but the foundation is in perpetual tension.
He likes to speak of the chance nature of the fold, of the imminent moment when the chain takes shape. His philosophy, if there is one, is abyssal, and his practice—artisanal—refutes plastic and pictorial eloquence. No, there is no commitment, no figurative, and no abstract.