L'homme aux oreilles de porc
A human skeleton whose bones are made of dog biscuits and whose organs are made of bacon slices: this is how Michel Blazy’s sculpture is conceived. Food materials, usually intended for everyday consumption, are here diverted from their function to form an anatomical model. By invoking elements of still life such as the skeleton, the work is akin to a kind of vanitas, a symbol of the fragility of time and the brevity of life. However, far from proposing a melancholic meditation on the futility of worldly pleasures, the installation asserts with humour a drive for life: it gradually changes shape and colour over the course of the exhibition, integrating the incongruous, random, and accidental factors linked to the process of development of the living or to the appearance of external agents such as insects. The sculpture thus develops its own metabolism, like an ecosystem that redefines itself in visual terms and is in constant renewal without the artist intervening. Michel Blazy’s ephemeral work is destined to disappear physically, but also to last virtually thanks to an operating manual.
Text written by Franny Tachon as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.
Exhibitions
Musée des Années 30, Boulogne-Billancourt (France)
from 13 Apr to 28 Oct 2012
Galerie Art : Concept, Paris (France)
from 05 Nov to 23 Dec 2005
La Galerie des Galeries, Paris (France)
from 01 Oct to 29 Oct 2005