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FRANCOIS WEIL
There is a profound and mysterious beauty in François Weil's sculptures, drawing parallels to the ancient menhirs of Carnac. Weil's art, characterized by its use of raw, unpolished stones directly extracted from quarries, reflects a deep respect for the natural material. These stones, with their rough, unshaped edges, are likened to ancient, majestic mountains, embodying a powerful sense of timelessness and universality.
Weil's creative process involves selecting these stones and transforming them into artworks without altering their fundamental nature, making them akin to "ready-mades" in stone. This approach is seen as a conscious rejection of traditional sculpting techniques, like chiseling or polishing, as Weil aims to present the stone in its original, unadorned form, embracing its inherent mystery and singular beauty.
The sculptures, while monumental in scale and unyielding in their raw form, are surprisingly mobile, set in motion with a simple push. This mobility adds a playful, yet profound dimension to the art, serving as metaphors for history's continuity and the oscillations of time.
Weil's work, refusing to conform to any specific artistic genre, eschews conceptual artifice, manifestos, or arrogance despite its monumental nature. His art's universality and originality have been recognized worldwide, with exhibitions from China to Brazil and Egypt, showcasing his unique talent and the compelling power of raw stone in sculpture.
MONUMENTAL SCULPTURES
BIOGRAPHY
François Weil, born in 1964 in Paris, is a renowned French sculptor whose work is characterized by a unique approach to stone. He is not a traditional carver of stone; instead, he focuses on cutting and assembling stones into specific shapes, exploring balance and kinetics in his sculptures.
Weil graduated from the National School of Applied Arts and Crafts in Paris in 1986 and completed his sculpture studies at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1988. His talent and unique approach to sculpture have been recognized with several awards, including the Pierre Cardin prize from the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris in 1997 and the Grand Prize at the Poznan sculpture biennial in Poland in 2006. In 2016, he received the Pierre Gianadda Foundation Prize at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris.
His works often bring together classical materials like black and blue Belgian marble, granite, Volvic stone, and Trélazé slate, arranged into frames or animated structures. This approach creates a blend of traditional and contemporary styles, allowing hard and dense stones like granite to exhibit subtle movement, challenging the laws of gravity and exploring the realms of imaginary archaeology and mineral exploration.
François Weil's sculptures have been exhibited in various prestigious locations and events, including the Fondation Arp in Clamart, France, the Église Saint Étienne in Beaugency, France, and Chambord Castle in France. He has also created monumental sculptures displayed in countries such as Brazil, Albania, China, Egypt, Russia, Mali, Romania, Guatemala, Italy, India, South Korea, and Germany
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS: CHAMBORD
ROTATING STONES
The beauty contains an element of mystery; it's the credo of those who are weak enough to believe in the poetry of the world, and who, stubbornly, want to put words (or art?) on everything that proves most resistant to attempts at decryption.But it was necessary for the men of the Neolithic era to find meaning in the grueling effort they gave to align 3000 stone mastodons over hundreds of meters. Similarly, François Weil, with his imposing mobile sculptures, undoubtedly finds meaning in a search that must indeed ignore its object. The unspeakable can give titan-like strength to those who question it.Weil's sculptures, like the megaliths, are inhabited by unfathomable mysteries. But all these large stones also possess another intriguing common characteristic, which may have something to do with the fascination that Carnac exerts on the sculptor. The menhirs are blocks that apparently have not been shaped or sculpted to decorate them; time, at best, may have dulled their edges.In this, they could be compared to those ancient mountains, frozen in their Hercynian solemnity, which command respect.Weil's sculptures are also made of raw stone, just as it was extracted from the quarry. There are only the necessary perforations for their assembly. The edges of the rock remain sharp, like the peaks of young mountains. In other words, Weil chooses a large stone, extracts it, and especially refrains from polishing it or attempting to extract any particular form from it.
