Project : Corpo Geologico,
Over the years the artist collects and catalogs stones choosing them based on a purely personal and unconscious call. The origin of these objects and the new place hosting them trace interconnections repeated over time, revealing the artist’s origins and his personal history.
The artist then performs an operation to displace the stone by inserting it into an alien environment and observing its interactions and alterations with the surrounding landscape as the movement of energy from one place to another.
The increasingly important accumulation of this mineral material leads to a broader reflection on temporality, which seems to also affect the so-called “inanimate life”, motionless and apparently impermutable.
Corpo Geologico is a still open project that deals with the theme of migration, identity, border and trespassing. It is an experiential archive that takes shape and grows over time.
The notion of frontier has always been linked to the idea of identity and it is inevitable that it will be transposed with people and their being willing or unwilling subjects to travel, migration, and exodus.
The photographic documentation present in the exhibition is a collection of each of these “actions” which were geolocated with the relative GPS coordinates captured at the time of shooting. Object in transition small stone has an intrinsic ability to be moved or removed and the placement of objects is also ephemeral and subject to further movements. The mapping operation therefore loses its positioning intent to fix, opening up different horizons, labile and without boundaries.
The term “pietra” (from the Latin petra rock) does not constitute a proper geological terminology as it is a residual object coming from large rocky conformations, which originated with the cooling of the earth forming a substratum that allowed the appearance of the vegetable, animal and later human life. The stone in its static nature in fact receives in itself the scans of the time of the earth and the stones in question thus coming from these great conformations trace the characteristics of a specific environment.
The artist’s story is an indirect story: the great global migration phenomena carry deep identity crises that, if compared in scale, accentuate the aspect of the individual’s condition as part of a macro process that involves everyone. Globalization and immigration are interdependent phenomena: the former is often the cause of the second due to a greater facilitation of the movement of people.
BIO
French interior designer and artist, Crescens Dupuis lives in
Venice since 2005. Graduated in 2004 from ESAG Penninghen
School of Art Direction and Interior Architecture in Paris, he has
collaborated with various studios of architecture, including the
Atelier Christian de Portzamparc in Paris and Pbinterior Design
in Venice. He actively collaborated with Atelier Gilles Dupuis
in Versailles making use of a rich and refined knowledge of
techniques belonging to the tradition of decorative arts.
He makes graphic design and concept design for formats also
in the retail sector.
He curated exhibitions at the Alliance Française in Venice
for the Biennale Arte 2011 and at the Milan Triennale for the
Michele De Lucchi studio.
He also collaborated at the IUAV (Institute University of
Architecture of Venice) as tutor and assistant of designers as
Paolo Orlandini, Micheal Burke or Michele De Lucchi.
He was production assistant for archeological documentaries.
His work led him to Ryad, London, Milan, Aman, Jerusalem
Beirut, Geneva, Paris, Abidjan and New York.
His artistic research is related to the concept of anthroposcene :
a project called SèME deals with the impact of great monoculture
cultivations and a work in progress ARTS PLASTIQUES is
about the problematics of pollution of plastics in the seas.
For years he has been working on a great photographic project,
still a work in progress, which in may 2019 has resulted in
an exhibition at the G.G Gemmellaro geological museum in
Palermo entitled CORPO GEOLOGICO which deals with the
issues of migration and borders with a reflection on identity.
More than 500 stones have been placed since 2015.