Antoine Leperlier

ANTOINE LEPERLIER SHAPING TIME

TABLE DES MATIÈRES

Michel Guérin LES ÉPOQUES DE LA PÂTE 6

1 PREMIÈRES ŒUVRES / VASES ET COUPES 18

2 SCULPTURES INITIALES 22

3 RELIQUAIRES / LA TRACE ET LE SOUVENIR 28

4 OMBRES PORTÉES / OMBRES MOULÉES / OMBRES D’UN INSTANT 38

5 STILL LIFE / STILL ALIVE 46

Andrew Brewerton OMBRES PORTÉES 58

6 VANITÉS AU LAPIN / VANITÉS AUX POISSONS 82

7 L’INSTANT JUSTE AVANT 88

8 VANITÉS CHAOS / KAIROS 98

9 FLEUVE ET STÈLE – FSLTEEULVEE 106

10 VANITÉS AU REPOS 112

John Edgar Wideman ÉCRIRE POUR SAUVER UNE VIE 122

Mikaël Faujour ANTOINE LEPERLIER, L’INTEMPESTIF 126

11 FLUX ET FIXE 138

12 CHAIR ET OS 148

13 ESPACE D’UN INSTANT / VEDUTA INTERNA 156

14 INSTANT ÉTERNITÉ / FRAGMENT TOTALITÉ 180

ANNEXE 185

Antoine Leperlier 186

Collections possédant des œuvres de l’artiste 189

Expositions 190

Enseignement et ateliers 191

Bibliographie 192

Auteurs 193

« L’artiste absolu » 196

« Un précurseur » 198

« Ce qui n’était qu’embryonnaire s’épanouit maintenant librement » 199

Mikaël Faujour

Antoine Leperlier 186

Collections featuring works by the artist 189 Exhibitions 190

Lectures and Workshops 191 Bibliography 192

Authors 193

‘The absolute artist’ 197

‘A forerunner’ 198

‘What was merely embryonic is now freely unfolding’ 199

OMBRES PORTÉES / OMBRES MOULÉES / OMBRES D’UN INSTANT

Je cherche à mouler dans le verre ces images que notre durée projette dans la mémoire ; images du temps qui « s’incarne » en y laissant sa trace, son ombre portée (en anglais, cast shadow, ombre portée/moulée).

Ces ombres-souvenirs, formes du vide et de l’absence, empreintes rendues visibles par la transparence du verre, sont comme autant de reliques qui signalent qu’ici quelque chose a été perdu qui fut proche. La mémoire est comme un reliquaire de cristal transparent au cœur duquel la durée sculpte des images…

2002

CAST SHADOWS / MOLDED SHADOWS / SHADOW OF AN INSTANT

I try to cast in glass those images which our continued existence projects into our memory; an image of time which ‘becomes incarnate’ by leaving its trace, its cast shadow. These shadow memories, forms of emptiness and absence, imprints rendered visible by the transparency of glass, are like so many relics that indicate that something close here has been lost. Memory is like a transparent crystal reliquary in which time sculpts images …

2002

LE TOMBEAU DE MONSIEUR MANET, 1994

Inv. 941004B 1/1

35 × 40 × 40 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel

inclusion, double-firing

Collection Lechaczynski, Biot, France

VANITÉ AUX POISSONS III, 1999 Inv. 990215 1/1

105 × 60 × 20 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson, support métal / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, double-firing, metal base

Michel Seybel Contemporary Art Collection, Strasbourg, France

VANITÉ AU LAPIN VI (La chute), 2001 Inv. 2010218 1/1

55 × 38 × 20 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson, support métal / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, double-firing, metal base

Alexander Tutsek Foundation, Munich, Allemagne / Germany

VANITÉ AU LAPIN IX, 2008 Inv. 2081214 1/1

60 × 35 × 10 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, double-firing

Collection artiste / artist’s collection

L’INSTANT JUSTE AVANT XIII, 2003

Inv. 2030415 1/1

19 × 20 × 20 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, double-firing

Michel Seybel Contemporary Art Collection, Strasbourg, France

EFFETS DE LA MÉMOIRE XXXV, 2006

Inv. 2090301 1/1

60 × 60 × 17 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson, support marbre / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, double-firing, marble base

Musée du verre François Décorchemont, Conches, France

COUPE VANITÉ VI, 2005

Inv. 2050315 1/1

17 × 20 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue / lost wax casting

Collection privée / private collection, France

COUPE AUX ANNEAUX V, 2007

Inv. 2071022 1/1

15 × 25 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue / lost wax casting

Collection artiste / artist’s collection

EFFETS DE LA MÉMOIRE XXXVII

(Coup de dé II), 2010

Inv. 2100421 1/1

24 × 22 × 22 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, double-firing

Michel Seybel Contemporary Art Collection, Strasbourg, France

(Kairos-Chaos-Janus), 2010

Inv. 2100325 1/1

37 × 26 × 23 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, double-firing Collection artiste / artist’s collection

VANITÉ AU REPOS XXVIII

WRITING TO SAVE A LIFE

John Edgar Wideman

In Paris, Antoine had shown me slides of his new work on exhibit in Nice. Transparent cubes, globes, chunks of glass with all sorts of unpredictable things displayed inside— antique coins, pressed flowers, perfect miniaturized replicas of frogs, lizards, snakes, seams of color, Latin and Greek inscriptions, a cluster of grapes—things which seemed to both swim and be frozen, trapped and liberated within glass walls. I’d always been intrigued by my friend’s work, its roots in ancient Egypt, necromancy, alchemy, and family tradition. The best of the new pieces continued an investigation of time, his whispered conversation with time I could eavesdrop upon. Time engaged. Time a medium both intimate and distant. A medium transparent and opaque as glass. All life sealed in glass and glass itself sealed within a sheath of uncertainties that allow it to assume forms as various as fire, water, air, earth. Glass complicit with time yet not quite able to alter or evade it. Lies encased in glass doomed to repeat and suffer history. Bearing witness again and again to time’s unchangeable grip.

In the shuffle of Paris slides, one in particular had caught my attention. An ebony-tinted block about twenty by twenty-four inches, five inches deep, containing thousands of tiny bubbles like breath bubbles or stars trapped in the implausible vastness of its interior, a galaxy of stars along with one immense bubble, a bone-white, see-through sphere filling nearly a third of the sculpture’s actual volume. A dark, purplish spill spreads down the sphere. Letters from a foreign alphabet are visible in neat black rows through the purple cloud. The letters glow mysteriously, and though they seem solid, substantial, they also crackle or dance or shift bearing the weight of many, many indecipherable messages. The piece unsettled me like those darkly uncertain shapes of roadkill when I walk or jog.

Roadkill is always my first reaction when I notice some unrecognizable dark form lying up ahead alongside my path. Something randomly, violently emptied of life, I think, though obviously I’m not sure what it is, nor sure how or when or even if death struck it, or what kind of death, and not exactly sure I want to know either.

Dead how long. A grisly, lumpish body part of remains or an entire creature. I won’t know until I get closer and sometimes uncertain even when I reach whatever it is lying there and halfway inspect it or halfway ignore it or a little bit of both usually while I pass. Often, I will keep guessing, wondering after the shape’s long gone behind me. Alive once. Dead once. Alive again as I had glimpsed it up ahead. Now dead again. Alive or dead perhaps not separate. Not either /or. A matter of time. Of now you see it, now you don’t.

Excerpt from John Edgar Wideman, Writing to Save a Life (New York: Scribner, 2016), pp. 174–175.

FLUX ET FIXE

Au cœur même du verre se révèle, sous formes d’images-oxymores, cette synthèse impossible des états contradictoires de la nature du présent, le flux et le fixe, mais aussi la stabilité et agitation, repos et chaos, l’instantanéité infinie, l’éternité en bascule ou encore l’apparition disparaissante, autant d’états visibles d’une temporalité que seul le hasard, dans le secret de la cuisson, sait saisir au cœur de la masse dure du verre.

2018

Alors que le concept précède l’œuvre avec l’ambition d’y soumettre la matière, on pourrait ainsi dire que, pour l’artiste travaillant son matériau, le projet est à venir, ou en devenir.

2017

FLUX AND FIX

The very heart of the glass reveals, in the form of image-oxymorons, this impossible synthesis of contradictory states of nature in the present, the flow and the fixed, but also stability and turbulence, rest and chaos, infinite instantaneity, eternity tipping or even a disappearing apparition, as many visible states of a temporality which only chance, in the mystery of firing, can seize at the heart of the hard mass of glass.

2018

Whereas the concept precedes the artwork with the ambition of subjecting the material to it, we could say that, for the artist working with his material, the project is yet to come, or is in the process of becoming.

2017

Flux et fixe XXXVIII, 2013 Inv. 2130925 1/1

30 × 30 × 9 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, inclusion céramique, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, ceramic inclusion, double-firing LIULI China Museum of Glass, Shanghai, Chine / China

CHAIR ET OS VI, 2015

Inv. 2150530 1/1

29 × 29 × 9 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, inclusion céramique, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, ceramic inclusion, double-firing Collection privée / private collection, France

CHAIR ET OS X, 2015

Inv. 2150605 1/1

29 × 29 × 10 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, inclusion céramique, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, ceramic inclusion, double-firing Collection artiste / artist’s collection

CHAIR ET OS XI, 2015

Inv. 2150606 1/1

29 × 29 × 9 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion émail, inclusion céramique, double cuisson / lost wax casting, enamel inclusion, ceramic inclusion, double-firing Collection privée / private collection, France

VEDUTA INTERNA XXI (Triptyque), 2023

Inv. 2230620 1/1

40,6 × 81,5 × 22 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion poudre de verre, triple cuisson / lost wax casting, glass powder inclusion, triple-firing Collection artiste / artist’s collection

VEDUTA INTERNA XXIII, 2023

Inv. 2230909 1/1

40 × 32 × 6 cm

Pâte de verre à cire perdue, inclusion poudre de verre, triple cuisson / lost wax casting, glass powder inclusion, triple-firing

Michel Seybel Contemporary Art Collection, Strasbourg, France

ANTOINE LEPERLIER

DONNER FORME AU TEMPS