The artist Julien RIDOUARD explores our common world through emotions and poetry, creating new boundaries between Science and Art. He developed his research by learning fundamental physics, working in laboratories (CEA & CNRS) in France and at the European synchrotron (ESRF). He has an MA in Fundamental physics and a second MA in Science Communication. To expand his art perspectives, he completed an accelerated course at the Paris’ National School of Art (ENDA) in 2020. Julien’s work focuses on the process of stimulating empathy and the need to experiment Science & Tech on our own chest. He works across a range of media including installation, film, photography and performance. He is carrying on this exploration of visual art on a daily basis with a residency in a high- tech laboratory specialized in microfabrication dedicated to research and microfluidics (Blackhole Lab & Elvesys Innovation Center) in Paris. Interviews are indispensable in Julien’s artistic work. Little by little, he allows mentalities to evolve on the acceptance of one’s emotions and that they express themselves more in the development of new technologies. So that future innovations will be more ‘human’, more in touch with the human being. In this paper, he approaches the art-science practice from an epistemological angle with a quantum perspective. Indeed, according to Julien Ridouard, the successive discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics give us tools to think about the evolutions of our contemporary societies, more than a hundred years after the introduction of quantum. Are the concomitantly developing arts-science practices the essence of new forms of ‘social entanglement’? This short sketch suggests the premises of a future work of Research-Creation dialoguing between the evolution of human practices, or pragmata, and the new quantum theories. It is a call to develop a network of partners capable of supporting the emergence of this research. We echo it in Plastir.
AS ON THE SILOS OF HISTORY – ROOTEDNESS AS A PRINCIPLE OF THE WORK OF ART.
Françoise LONARDONI is an art historian and is in charge of the cultural department at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Lyon. She previously directed the Artothèque de Lyon – Bibliothèque municipale, and the Espace arts plastiques de Vénissieux, where she curated numerous exhibitions, including : Daniel Firman, Raphaël Zarka, documentation céline duval, Rudolf Bonvie, Lucy Watts, Ludovic Paquelier, Valérie Crenleux, Gabriele di Matteo, Gerd Bonfert, Jérémy Liron, Fabienne Ballandras… She teaches at the University of Lyon, as well as at the E-art campus in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province – China. She regularly publishes critical texts for artists or in aesthetic fields such as contemporary photography, the artist’s book or at the crossroads between aesthetics and society: research-creation, new mediations, art as a participative practice. She is a member of the board of the contemporary art and print centre URDLA (Villeurbanne), and of the association Documents d’artistes Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. She is a graduate of the École d’Art Appliqués de Sèvres and the Beaux-arts de Lyon. Valérie CRENLEUX enriched her training at the IIIS school in Trappes and then in digital communication at Marcorel. From 1997 to 2023, her research was carried out in the studio and in artist residencies and made her sensitive to the environment: Cognin agricultural high school, DRAC Rhône-Alpes, Moly Sabata, Albert Gleizes Foundation and more recently at the Centre des Arts et des Sciences Atlas de la ville de Saint-Ouen. She has participated in several video festivals in France and abroad: Vidéomedja in Yugoslavia, les instants vidéos in Manosque, la friche de la belle de Mai in Marseille and the Vidéo Formes festival in Clermont-Ferrand. Various venues have contributed to the promotion of the works produced through exhibitions and publications. A collective portfolio « Points in spaces » was published in 75 copies on banks and gathered on this occasion 4 serigraphies of artists. In 2018, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition: « Le dessin de la terre, espaces sensibles » at the Domaine départemental de Montauger in partnership with the exhibition: « Nuits« , Natural History Museum. Then in 2022, she exhibited at the Galerie Espace Regards « Génèse(s) » with Pauline Liswoski and at the Galerie Héloise « Ici-là-bas » curated by Emma Bourgin. Recently, her work has been the subject of an installation « Mondes Souterrains« ; « le nom du monde est forêt » with the CNEAI at the CIUP, Maison de l’île de France. In April 2023, the exhibition « Racines » will be at the gallery of the Centre de Arts et des Sciences. Then, she was invited to participate in the Bellastock 2023 « ephemeral city » festival. For Plastir, Françoise Lonardoni presents the genesis of Valérie Crenleux’s work, situating it in the context of contemporary art and its influences, in particular Gilles Clément, but above all emphasising her singular approach. It begins with a large canvas covered in weeds which, paradoxically, already gives the feeling of dealing with living matter, with life. Then, very quickly, we understand that what agitates the artist is the relationship between the underground and the air: in other words, the roots understood as the essential link between the elements, between the visible and the invisible, like the vertical growth that characterises the living. And it is indeed from this intimate relationship between the stem and the root, between the buried and the emerging, between the night and the sun, that Valérie Crenleux suggests a presence. « In some respects, this shared fascination could be compared to the Surrealists’ interest in natural phenomena, » Françoise Lonardoni rightly tells us, referring to Caillois and his minerals. But here, the material is vegetal, slow, powerful… gradually giving rise to the root works of Valérie C. where the root material is kneaded, moulded like the clay of a sculpture. Thus these root-hands that stretch out and the slow gestation of the series of fetuses: a plastic, even plasmatic symbiosis that shows an unfinished body… Other, more pictorial approaches return to Fautrier, while the lianas and root networks spread out in a variety of materials, stone, terracotta (root eggs), asphalt or braids and mouldings giving the artist the ephemeral and magical status of a lace maker. Large canvases streaked with roots constantly remind us that the essential motif is the inclusion of living matter within the canvas. And it can follow different paths, sometimes urban, sometimes ecocidal, but always linked to nature, the Earth and the consciousness of inhabiting it in Descola’s sense. More deeply, it is the strong symbolism of seeds or blurred roots embedded in resin, of carpets of roots signifying anthropic pressure, of building sites aiming to read and feel the earth, of geological materials, of paleosols and megaliths that are revealed in turn. Whatever the materials and techniques used, it is always the need for art that emerges in this account, within which the exploration of the artist’s intimate « silos of history » shines through, and Françoise Lonardoni makes us discover the flow and all its sides without concession. A subterranean world to which one can only put down roots…
Christian RUBY is a philosopher. He is a member of the ADHC (association for the development of cultural history), of the ATEP (Tunisian association of aesthetics and poetics), of the Entre-Deux collective (Nantes, whose vocation is public art) as well as of the Observatory of creative freedom. A former member of the Board of the FRAC Centre Val-de-Loire, he has published in recent years: Abécédaire des arts et de la culture, Toulouse, Éditions L’Attribut, 2015; Devenir spectateur? Invention et mutation du public culturel, Toulouse, Éditions L’Attribut, 2017; Des cris dans les arts plastiques (see publications), Brussels, La lettre volée, 2022. www.christianruby.net. After an inaugural essay on the art-science field published in Plastir, 52, 12/2018, he published several articles in Plastir n°53, 55 & 56 in this field or questioning the intersecting fields of public policy/education/citizenship and art. In this issue, he takes an original approach to the idea of cultural health, summarized as follows: Faced with the formulation of educational proposals, it is appropriate to question the form of humanity and the city drawn. In this case, for some time now, the outlines of measures to be included in public policies for the education of citizens and their children, or even the children of the century that we all are, have been referring to a denial of the philosophies of emancipation, a crisis of the « virtues » of succession and the ambition to dissolve it by imposing a « cultural health » on all « children ». By putting together six critical moments relating to the idea of « cultural health », we would like to contribute to underlining the need to deal less with « children » (or « young people ») than with those who care for them and their anxieties.
Mounir SAMY is an art lover and collector. He was born in Egypt and arrived as an immigrant in Quebec some 50 years ago after his graduation from medical school. He is a medical doctor, child psychiatrist, retired associate professor of psychiatry at McGill university and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (Canada). He is also an adult and child psychoanalyst member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Samy is the founder and president of the Aquarium Foundation, the only psychoanalytic foundation for the wellbeing of children, adolescents, and young adults in Canada. He worked for about 40 years at McGill University Health Centre – Montreal Children’s Hospital, with community agencies and in his private practice. He has also undertaken several humanitarian psychiatric missions in war zones or underprivileged areas on four continents. He is the author of several scientific and general publications. Dr. Samy is the first recipient of the Meritas Award from the Association Québécoise de Suicidologie and nominated for the 2000 Award of Excellence by the Association des Psychiatres du Québec (AMPQ). He founded Aquarium as a legacy of a career devoted to the deep emotional needs of children and families and to highlight the importance of the inner world, at the source of all creativity, love, beauty and meaning in our world in crisis. Sonia Indelicato ROSEVAL is a Montreal-raised multidisciplinary Visual artist whose work explores spirituality, nature, and universal connectivity of people. Working on a range of mediums, bright colors, dreamy textures, and symbolic shapes creates an immersive visual experience, inviting viewers to consider the relationship between their inner and outer selves and the forces beyond them that they may not yet be aware of. Sonia Roseval’s visual art celebrates our common humanity, connecting us to our environment and to each other beyond ethnicity, gender, and religious beliefs. Her work delves into the spiritual realm while being deeply rooted in the natural world, showing us the interconnectedness of all life. Meditation since 1989, She went and lived in the Greater New York city area from 1991 to 1998. At that time, she was approached to give her works on paper at the Museum of Women in the arts in Washington D.C. She was also approached to do a project of drawings with the Foundation in charge of Monticello home of Thomas Jefferson. Upon returning to Canada her highlights were exhibiting at the Nova Scotia Gallery in Halifax. The gallery of Greater Victoria B.C. She donated a big collection of her works to the psychiatric wing at the Victoria hospital. One of her works stands out as the emblem of the psychoanalytic society of the French sector in Montreal. In the recent years she exhibited at the Ecomusée du fier monde of Montreal. The Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Ste-Hilaire. The Pierre Boucher Museum in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. Several jury exhibitions at Stewart Hall Gallery, Pointe-Claire. Member of the Association of Artists for Peace. Recent publications: La revue Rencontre (cover page and six-page article) Les Cent Vingt du Cercle des Artistes Peintre du Québec, by Guy Robert. Residencies: Ireland, the United States, France, and Portugal. For Plastir, an original article in which Mounir Samy becomes the storyteller of secret, imaginary and yet very real conversations that the artist Sonia Indelicato Roseval would have with a father whose scientific career she admires so much and with whom she addresses herself through collage, making the chemical formulas on yellowed paper dialogue, even dance, according to her artistic fantasy. It is an unprecedented science-art dialogue because it is silent, iconic and in representation. A father-daughter dialogue that is unprecedented because, as the author points out, it stems from unspoken words and takes the form of a choreography in which the artist seeks the tone, the rhythm, the dance step that would give her back the first emotion of her childhood, more lulled by her mother’s harmonics than by her father’s harsh chemical formulas. But who cares, on her canvases, the steps fly, the tongues are loosened, the formulas are detached as if by magic to follow their dance steps… Further on, it is the maternal black and white forms in the image of musical notes that prevail. And we discover that it is the entire paternal universe that is secret, his laboratory, his role in the army, his indecipherable writings… The author shows us how Sonia Roseval transcends these unanswered questions, this emptiness that remains, seeking redemption in her works rather than a peremptory answer to her questioning. It is also a work of mourning and hope, caught up in the mass in that it contains pieces of childhood and the father’s own writings recomposed by his daughter. « For Sonia Indelicato Roseval’s work and its development in the collection inspired by her father is a search for the life buried in what is organic. Research into the macrocosm and microcosm of perception. An aesthetic is produced around a cellular nature« , says Mounir Samy about this second series of works presented, which he imagines as seen through a microscope and relating « a bridge between art and living nature« . The reader will then find very recent works that the artist has entrusted to us for Plastir, where a festival of forms and colours invades the entire space. The artist once again creates a dialogue between forms and backgrounds representing nature seen, in his own words, as a chaos integrating forms of nets that protect the whole. How can we not see in this the invasive love carried in the first paintings by the protective image of the father and crossing us here from one side to the other, so much the art as the message are universal.