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Steph Cop & Bálint Pörneczi, the ecosystem of sculpture through the eye of the photographer

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Steph Cop places his artistic research immersed in the ecosystem of the Morvan where he has set up his workshop. Sculpture is part of a life cycle, the extent of which the artist explores.

IX, an ordered sequence of 9 forms.

By sculpting fallen trees, bearing the stigmata of a memorial story, he prolongs their inscription in the story of Man. IX, an ordered series of 9 ARO forms - figures, was a major movement in Steph Cop's work between 2008 and 2020. A movement that developed as an instrospective exploration of a relationship between man and woman. tree, a stylized and uncluttered projection of the possible multiples of being-in-the-world. Randomly about artistic projects, Steph Cop met the photographer Bálint Pörneczi. He wondered with what eye the portrait painter would approach his figures of ARO, personifications of the tree. Because, the ARO cycle ending, the moment had undoubtedly come to open the face-to-face between the I of the artist and the sculpted figure to a third gaze, the moment to extract oneself from the anthropomorphic mirror to finally to be able to understand the tree as an alterity, to grasp the sublime of its singularity, to offer it a specific aesthetic, beyond the projection of oneself. The photographer's eye will have been this other presence which allows everyone to find their own subjective place. Steph Cop therefore invited Bálint Pörneczi to follow him in his wanderings in Morvan, an inspiring source, to meet trees and sculptures, immersed in the artistic journey.

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Bálint Pörneczi, the eye of the photographer.

The photographer was initially unsettled by the fact of attaching himself to a static subject, he who realizes his portraits in a movement of exchange from which emerges the evidence of a pose. He then approached the sculptures as characters. His photographs restore the living embodiment of the tree by creating, through the play of light and field, the temporality and depth of a story, as they do with faces. Bálint Pörneczi imagines the original tree in ARO, looks for these details in the system of fibers that draw character traits, expressions that lift the veil on interiority, tell a story, an experience with the elements. He imagines the presence in ARO to meet his mystery. And, beyond the work, the photographer restored the ecosystem of the artistic quest, working like a documentary filmmaker. Outside the scope of the genesis of Steph Cop's work, he watched for the fragments of creative tension, the fleeting moments of grace that he seized with that eustochia that Aristotle defined as the accuracy of the glance. He gave a glimpse of the mysterious depth of the Morvan forest which inspires the sculptor or the brutal and elegant body language that links the hand, the tool and the material. So many flashes captured by the intuition of Bálint Põrneczi, which will be, in his photographs, a visible trace of the invisible journey of creation.

The photographs are the kairos of the work, this time which refers to the intensity of the present feeling and gives depth to the moment. When Steph Cop projects a part of his interiority into the ARO work, Bálint Põrneczi exteriorizes its details, signs, marks. Its lens sheds light on the intangible, the unspeakable. The photographer has inscribed the singularity of his work and developed his own research through a series entitled "The Trace", approached as an ephemeral that persists. An intimate look at the precision of the lines, the skin of the tree photographed like his portrait collections. The fibers of the tree appear like facial wrinkles, the imprint of passing time, the story of the living history on sculpted material. The rings of the tree create abstractions that Bálint Põrneczi seizes while a ray of light comes to illuminate them. Through the photographs revealed, the sculptor discovers secrets that he had not pierced. Bálint Pörneczi's break-in gaze reveals an artistic dendrochronology of sculpted material, the imprint of intimate ephemeris. 

Balint Porneczi, a photographer based in Aveyron, had already documented the in situ sculpture project of a Robur in Rodez. This work of sculpture by Steph Cop is a beautiful story that could be carried by the patronage Hatchikian Gallery, thanks to which a book was published and offered to enthusiasts of the artist's work as well as to those who may have been touched by this monumental sculpture of a century-old sequoia in the center of the courtyard of the Joseph Fabre college in Rodez, which has seen generations of children grow up and play, witness to all of Ruthenian secrets. It is always a meeting with a tree that is born a sculpture project in the work of Steph Cop. The sequoia in the courtyard of Collège Fabre in Rodez was at the twilight of its vitality. This is how Steph Cop was asked to restore the size of a tree emblematic of the particular history of a place. there are trees  majestic which accompanied with their presence the generational transmission in the cities and the villages, or in remarkable landscapes: these constitute as much material that the artist will endeavor to sculpt, as a way of never closing the page of a book where a narrative that is both embodied and imaginary is written: that of time, of life, of being-in-the-world. The project took place within the framework of the Soulages century, celebrating the centenary of the master of the Outrenoir native of the city which houses a museum dedicated to his work. It is the Robur figure that will restore its power to the century-old sequoia of Rodez. For Steph Cop, Robur embodies the strength of the tree and the flaws of time. In the ARO series, a matrix research of the work, Robur is distinguished by his silhouette that is both abrupt and fine. Robur  is a tutelary figure, indefectible, a pillar. He embodies here the symbolic imagination of the sequoia for the Indians who place this indestructible phoenix as the center of gravity of the world. Robur represents the force of nature like the character of Robur the Conqueror in Jules Verne's novel. The 22 days of sculpture required for this project were immortalized by Bálint Pörneczi and the book dedicated to the Tree of Rodez financed by Hatchikian Gallery associated with the diary kept by the artist each day and the photographs of the progress of the work Creation. 22 days of sculpture within the college grounds will transform the tired tree into a timeless and memorial work. Steph Cop first discovers the sequoia, his intimate material-flesh which bears the traces of his biography. 22 days of carving will give the tree the ARO figure which will give it a personified existence. Robur is distinguished by its silhouette that is both abrupt and slender, embodying the strength of the tree and revealing the flaws that testify to its long life struggling with the moods of men, the earth and the winds. This is how art was able to prolong the beautiful memorial story of the century-old sequoia, through the majesty of Robur 4400, a monumental sculpture exhibited in Rodez during the year 2019, year of the Soulages Century, with the assistance of Hatchikian Gallery, and on the proposal of the Rodez art library, Christophe Lauras, principal of the Fabre college and Julien Tenes, plastic arts teacher. Steph Cop asked local photographer Bálint Pörneczi to document the project and give a behind-the-scenes look at the genesis of a sculpture. 

Steph Cop and Bálint Pörneczi continued their collaboration for the book IX Tree and as an epilogue to this work in mirror which constituted the substance of the book devoted to the movement IX in the work of the sculptor, punctuated by photographs and texts which lift a veil , between shadows and lights, on the artistic ecosystem of Steph Cop, both have co-signed a serigraph, ARO.ÁBRÁZAT, to be discovered among the works offered by Hatchikian Gallery.

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