paper 224 g/m2
White wooden frame, Plexiglass
59 x 39 3/8 in.
61 3/8 x 41 3/4 in. framed
papier Canson 224 g/m2
Encadrement bois blanc, Plexiglas
150 x 100 cm
156 x 106 cm encadré
City of God
This drawing of ruined architecture is a contemporary vanity in stone and metal, a modern take on the memento mori theme. It consists of an industrial warehouse giving onto the interior of a recomposed Baroque church.
Combining several different periods and aspects of history, it symbolises the collapse of two powers on the world stage: the religious and the economic. These buildings of stone and steel could not withstand human or natural disaster. In the centre of the drawing we can see what remains of a theatre stage linking these two spaces, a pool of standing water that will corrode the building (traditionally, in this kind of presentation, still water is a symbol of death and destruction, in opposition to the fecund, creative earth). Through this dehumanised architecture the artist is offering an implicit portrait of our age, when what we thought solid and indestructible is fading, crumbling and shrinking. The power of the church has long been on the wane and that of the economy, as constructed over the last few centuries (to the detriment of the former) has been violently shaken over the last decade. The model is in crisis, as was the political union of the religious and the economic in the past. Form, whether of stone or metal, is perishable, and this reminds us of our human condition.