Name Ariel Moscovici | ||
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Appreciating the work of Ariel Moscovici at 101 in Taipei
Ariel Moscovici (born 1956, Bucharest, Romania) is a sculptor born in Romania and based in France. His drawings and sculptures have appeared in France at Salons de Mai, Grands et Jeunes d'aujourd'hui, Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, 33rd Salon de la Jeune Sculpture, 3Oth Salon de Montrouge, and others. Internationally, his work has been the subject of exhibits and installations in Andorra, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Moscovici works have been awarded first prize at the Biennale Internationale de Sculpture Contemporaine, Collioure and purchase awards from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. Moscovici's public art work Between Sky and Earth, was installed at Taipei 101 in 2003.
Contents
- Appreciating the work of Ariel Moscovici at 101 in Taipei
- Ariel Moscovici
- Style
- Installations and exhibits
- References
Born in Bucharest, Romania, Moscovici graduated in 1979 from L'École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Paris. He now lives in the south of France. He is married to French sculptor Sylvie Rivillon.
臺中市政府公共藝術 - Ariel Moscovici
Style
Moscovici, normally reluctant to discuss art in words, has in recent years offered a few written comments for exhibit programs. His remarks include the following observations.
In my work I use mostly what may be called classical materials (stone, wood, clay, bronze, metal. etc.) because these are almost abstract and amorphous. Their identity resides mainly in their structure (except for metal). This allows me to model them the way I want while respecting their character.
I want to realize what I call "inhabited forms"--forms that contain energy, as if they could breathe and live by themselves. This is a personal attitude of mine, both classical and modern, as I don't wish to be part of any official fashion or artistic movement.
My subjects have no clear borders. They are connected to each other. My basic themes: nature; landscapes that accommodate and oppose human creation; an architecture of the "spirit"; skeletons and enveloping skin; the evocation of a feeling or a sound or a privileged location; landscapes with flat areas and mountains, rough or modelled, with erosion that is natural or artificial, accomplished by nature or man.
I am lately working on a series of variations on a theme. In Between Three Points [2000] I explored the idea of reading a sculpture in time, as in a work of music. The work is built from three pieces that... tell the story of the creation of a form in three chapters: (1) the beginning, birth, or underground level, (2) the initiation, or earth ground level, and (3) the rebirth or result tending toward the sky. The form is not completely free to grow as it will, but is constrained and guided by internal tectonic pressures and external atmospheric pressures. The sculpture can be read in two directions at the same time: horizontally between the three parts and vertically between the ground and the sky....
In Between Earth and Sky [2002] the idea is the same but expressed more in the vertical direction. We have axels between two points, places where passage can take place. The axels stand as almost human figures between the matter and spirit, between the underground (hell) and the sky....
The surface of my forms is worked in the same way: smooth areas in opposition to rough ones and simple, almost geometrical, forms facing multifaceted, chaotic accumulations of shapes. Simplicity strikes me as dangerous. It's wrong to try to understand things by eliminating the details instead of understanding the whole in its complexity. I think the details create the whole.
Moscovici's images, though modern, may be described as postmodernist in the sense that they are more archetypal than abstract. Raymond Crampagne describes their effect in a publication by the Chateau le Puget Art Gallery:
The works are not a reflection of geometrical forms in a timeless space. They have a temporal dimension relating not to history or mythology but to a world that existed before both; even so, this world forms the essence of both history and myth. This is a world constantly engaged in struggle. The protagonists in the conflict, humanity and nature, operate in a world of opposites: smooth and rough, gloss and matte, geometrical and irregular, concave and convex, straight and curved, round and square, polished and rough, full and empty, imprint and excrescence, horizontal and vertical, mass and surface. For Moscovici this conjunction of opposites is characteristic of our species' relationship with nature. Though we are ourselves part of nature, we exert our will over matter and impose our own vision, eventually transforming nature to reflect our innermost being.
Like Rimbaud seeking to write the silences, seize the inexpressible, and freeze whirlwinds, Moscovici seeks to translate into images the fundamental rhythms of existence and the mysteries of nature....
Moscovici displays a profound humanism whose expression is anything but extravagant. The means are simple. The eye and the spirit are called inward. ... Here one is facing an uninhabited habitat, a dwelling lacking practical purpose. Only the eye of the beholder will enter and find refuge and, in solitude, dream of habitation.
(Translation: Robert Drew, Jacques Carrio, Alton Thompson)
Installations and exhibits
One-Artist Shows
1985
Maison de la Culture, Courbevoie, France
1986
1987
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
Group Exhibits
1985
1987
1988
1990
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000 "20 sculptors", Les Punxes Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
Monumental Open-Air Sculptures
1987 - Sculpture (1%), Les Aunettes, Évry III, Versailles, Paris, France
1988 - Monumental Sculptures Park, Sculpture Symposium, Gueugnon, France
1990 - UCCOAR, Samary Park, Sculpture International Symposium
1991 - Lavelanet museum, Sculpture Symposium
1993 - International Sculpture Symposia, Carcassonne and Auxerre, France
1994 - Taichung Fine Arts Museum, Taichung, Taiwan
1997 - 1998 Andorra Sculpture Park, Escaldes, Andorra
1999 - Hualien Cultural Center Symposium. Hualien, Taiwan
2002
2004 - Fountain for the City of Chalabre, France
2006 -Mosan Symposium, Korea
2007 - Tudela de Duero symposium, Spain
Collections