Steph Cop inscribes his artistic research in immersion in the Morvan ecosystem where he has set up his studio. The sculpture is part of a vital cycle that the artist explores in its entirety.
By carving fallen trees bearing the stigmas of a memorable history, he prolongs their inscription in the narrative of Man. IX, a series ordered from 9 forms – figures ARO – constituted a major movement in Steph Cop’s work between 2008 and 2020. A movement that developed as an introspective exploration of the relationship between Man and the tree, a stylized and refined projection of the multiple possibilities of being-in-the-world. By chance, during artistic projects, Steph Cop met the photographer Bálint Pörneczi. He wondered with what eye the portraitist would approach his figures of ARO, personifications of the tree. Because, with the ARO cycle coming to an end, the time had undoubtedly come to open up the confrontation between the artist’s self and the figure sculpted in a third-person perspective; the moment to step out of the anthropomorphic mirror and finally be able to understand the tree as a distinct entity, to grasp the sublime in its singularity, to offer it a specific aesthetic, outside the projection of self. The photographer’s eye would thus have been that other presence that allows each person to find their own subjective place. Steph Cop therefore invited Bálint Pörneczi to follow him on his wanderings in the Morvan region, an inspiring source, encountering trees and sculptures, immersed in the artistic process.
