Claude Cehes, scuptor of future archeology

Fania Perez

"Injected in our called evolved society with nothing a-do the primitive, between the screen and the keyboard, the logical and the prodical takes us to an ultimate vision of reality", so says Michel Faucher about the meaning of Claude Cehes' work.

Claude cehes was born in Algeria in 1949. She says "I think I have purged lots of sequels of what happened in the forties and width thanks that my parents didn't suffer too much. But my imagination, the reality was so ferocious that it has profoundly affected me. I feel that I am just one link in the human chain that dates back more than 5000 years and in which my Judaism is taken into account.

After studies in letters, she survived the courses at the School of Beaux Arts in Paris. "But above all", she says "I received a rudimentary and rigid education that serves me in an extraordinary manner : I learned classical sculpture width the production of a celebrated sculptor. This completely academie approach gaveme a totally solid foundation that I consider essantial. I also went towork marble in Pietrasanta, Italy, in a small studio, where the master taught me to carve by tapping me on my fingers. Working marble impassioned me. The marble found in the mountains dates back millions of years. To sculpt it gave me the impression of creating time. To carve it put me in touch with the universe, this is a work of eleboration, with respect to the stone, of patience. This material takes us to the genesis of the earth, but we ignore what is the destiny of what we have sculpted.
"when she sculpt" says Claude Cehes, "it produces a strange feeling."
She gets the feeling thather work jumps ahead of itself, that her hands create the work even faster than the thought was initiated, that her hands create the work even faster than the thought was initiated, that it evolves and grows even faster than the thought was conceived. The scultpure seems to be born spontaneously, it seems et be crystallized by her unconsciousness, by surprise, at first hand by its creator.

Cehes works by themes. All of them speak of mankind and tranlates his anxieties, his questionning, his hesitations, his evoulion. When she thinks that she has exhausted a subject, that it no longer suffices her, generally after fifteen or twenty sculptures, she passes on to the next. Each work is unique. Cehes never repeats herself.

After her first sculptures, Claude Cehes, who comes from a medical background and as a youngster assisted in surgery, she wished to show the inside of the human body. She chose to work in marble, in this material, she attained the realistic image that manking is soft, flaccid, slack, then she painted the organs, playing with the colors. At first sight the sculptures are beautiful and very attractive. Then by looking on more closery, one discovers that what she represents is horrendous. All works portray this quality. For Cehes, as for lots of artists, "the beauty and the beast" is a permanent aesthetic expression, she explains easely that which man is capable of doing to mankind, it's terrifying.

In the series "the Needles" that can grow as tall as 2.20 meters in height, Cehes to liberate manking, showing that he is not made of solely flesh and bone, that he portrays himself in his own transcendence. In each sculpture, a person emerged in a glacier is pierced by one or more needles that lift you towards the sky. At the tip of these needles, the viewer discovers forms pzerced by their destiny, personages in their different forms of their gestation. This manking tries to quit his matrix and go beyond. in Bronze, glass or marble, these needles witness human adventure. cehes wishes to discover and make us discover what is one the other side of the mirror, these are the apparent doors. What happens when one has cleared the threshold ? claude Cehes says "maybe the artist always remains like the young child at the age of demanding retenlessly the fundamental question: Who? What? Why? In the doors a murderer is permitted to slip through the eye of the needle, each one to find their own 'beyond' ". The doors have an austere and rigorous aspect and the sculptor is most privileged above all, to create it in dimensional space. space hovers, the thrid dimension doesn't exit and it is the imagination of the viewer that creates the fourth dimension. Then pushed by the need to give volume on their sides. She has perceived that they make you think of pagan titual objects, sometimes a place of refraction and reflection. She discovered that they some sort of archetypical lamina of the tarot and so produced the entire series.

"The Lamina of the Tarot" sculpture are patinated by red bulls' blood and black, pierced by spears and lances carrying in themselves all the violence of the unconscious. The importance of these universal symbols that speak of our destiny and humanity, is in that which is hidden inside, that which Cehes also calls "boxes of the unconscious".

In creating the little "idols of the future" made of concrete, pebbles and bronze Cehes investigates and makes us investigate the evolution of man, bby his eventual phtsical mutation with more and more difficulty to communicate likenesses. Following her research Cehes works since several years now on the theme of "mutations". At the places where the metamorphose lives. She encloses it in concrete or glass, himself being of alchemy of sand.

To go even further Cehes decides to attack a new material: the sponge. She explains that "after she spent years interested on the interior of the human body, she now looks at in its' mutations like a way of reacting to events, to sound waves, to cell phones, to the news, to manipulation. I find that the sponge characterizes well the 2001 century, il absorbs all without discernment. I decides to work the skin of the sponge like I worked the skin of the marble. My first show titled "Flesh and Bone" . I showed the burns, the body that was not protected received the blows directly. By using the sponge I tried to render the fragility of being human. Without being more defensive, he absorbs all: virtual images that replace reality, aliment capacity of genetically modified organisms, transfusions carrying aids and lots of other things. I am my first spong, i capture what happens around me and regurgitate it in my own manner. In the age Greeks and the Romans here civilization was created, marble was imposes and played a very important role. In out time, where, except myself, everything disintegrates, I find that the sponge that is perforated all over, is the material that works best. I work on giant blocks of 400 kilos that are delivered humid. To work the sponge, one has to know how to carve marble, also surprising of what it can be. I use bread knives and scalpels. The change of materials generates the change of form. The imagination begins. Tor the exhibit "Games in the Arts in the 20th Century" shown at Biarritz and at Saragosse, I carved in sponge an athlete of 3.10 meters in height. One of the particularities of sponge is that it dries, so one has to water it, giving it air and blood, it becomes interactive. Cehes generally represents her personages with only one eye. This represents man that not only has one vision of the world, and somewhere is also blind. One can also imagine, that there is something in him that is not yet awake, and that is yet to come.

At the same time as the work of her sculpture, Cehes practices the work of engraving. She just won first prize in an open competition as the Paris Mint (Monnaie de Paris) for the creation of a medallion on the theme of the environment. Her project at the same time strong and poetic represents a man walking on the curvature of the earth: on his shoulders he carries a scale with two trays: on one there is a futuristic city, on the other a tree. For the planet to survive the two must balance out equally.

Since her first exhibit in 1977, Claude Cehes does not cease to surprise and question her viewer with the wealth and variety of her creations. Always in the questioning and research, she moves from the realization of monumental sculpture for the public to the elaboration of more intimate works that enchant us. Cehes, the name that she has made for herself, has become that of a great artist.