Horloges

The “clock” pieces are an extract from the works that the artist has designed on the theme of the perception of time. Ally or enemy, peaceful or violent, inert or aggressive, time must be understood here in relation to the living. Time is also a pretext for the artist to explore very varied immaterial notions such as breathing, Zen, intuition or a critical look at an accelerating society. Art is an always open dialogue and the process towards the finished piece is as important as the idea or the result.

Experimenting, researching, probing the materials and their pragmatism establishes the balance of the work. Vincent Du Bois’ “clocks” express the creative or destructive course of the mechanisms of perception and action. The wax builds a form like an echo, the sun burns the material by inflicting its trace. Cycles of reproduction and destruction weave together and shape the world. Like time.

Faithful to his precept of always choosing the material best suited to serving the idea, Vincent Du Bois’s works alternate materials and go from object to installation as needed.

Artiste

Vincent Du Bois

Année

2017

Éléments réalisés

Pierre, cierge, moteur

Dimensions

200 x 200 x 40 cm

Candela Watch (ou Candlewatch)

An 80 cm long candle is fixed on a motor which describes a horizontal circular movement above a slate plate. The candle acts as a needle and marks the march of time as it burns away, leaving a spiral of wax on the ground. The destructive time and the creative time. Imitating the principle of the clock, the candle, in its revolution, burns its wax and simultaneously deposits on the black slate the echo of its passage. Like communicating vessels, the candle gradually disappears while on the ground freezes a drawing, like a testimony, a clue, a vestige. The movement gives way to the trace. Inspired by both the ancient sundial and the non-linear oriental representation of time, the clock depends on light (fire or the sun) to mark its cycle. Here time only exists in its encounter with movement.

Candle Watch illustrates the notion of cycle, of alternation between complexity and entropy, and sketches the link between presence and memory. The Gothic decor of the Church of Notre Dame des Grâces, which hosts the work, offers a historic setting and an intimate atmosphere ideal for illustrating the interplay between darkness and light and between past and present that hovers over this burning time.

Thanks to:

Atelier Sébastien De Haller (technical development)
Alois Vogel mechanical workshop (clock movement)
City of Lancy (artistic support)
Philippe Matthey and the Catholic parish of Lancy (reception)

Sunwatch (ou burningwatch)

Also inspired by the ancient sundial, Burningwatch depends on the fire of the sun to mark its cycle. Here the hand, which completes its turn at the rate of the minute, is fitted at its end with a glass sphere which produces a magnifying effect under the action of the sun. Here the material is altered, burned, by the passage of time. The wood that acts as the dial is marked with each revolution of the hand with a new ellipse of charcoal. The fire which is born under the magnifying glass digs spiral furrows which shift following the course of the sun. Each hour, each week, each season, narrows or lengthens its trace. Sometimes, it is not the dial that is burned but a cardboard disc covered with an inscription in the style of Roman dials. Latin quotations like OMNES VULNEARANT, ULTIMA NECAT (all hurt, the last one kills), add to the perception of the hour this cruel dimension so typical of passing time.