Rings
Artist
Vincent Du Bois
Year
2022
The Rings project is a work started in the USA during the artist’s studies that he has continued without any real interruption since. On the theme of the ephemeral and the infinite, Rings is a proposal of the human perception of time and infinite space. The challenge here is to find one or more visualizations of the relationship between man and the universe, between the finite and the infinite.
Rising Rings 1
Rising Rings 2
Like the water waves that are created after throwing a stone into a body of water, the Rising Rings installation stages a game of concentric circles. About fifteen rings of increasing diameters pass from the vertical position to the horizontal position. The first ring, the smallest (diam 180cm) is placed vertically and symbolizes the field of human perception. Perpendicular to it, lying on the ground, is the largest ring (diam approx. 15m) which symbolizes the entrance to the infinite expanses of space. Between them is articulated a series of rings which gradually tilt, increasing their diameter to freeze a visualization of this progression. The installation continues on the ground the impetus given by this first lying element via a series of successive rings that are ever larger, suggesting an infinite enlargement.
Rings 1 & 2
Rings 3
Ricochets, a game that has fascinated the artist since childhood, are an inspiration that serves this theme as ephemeral and infinite. The Rings installation takes up the principle of ricochet but erases the pebble to retain only the succession of waves via a play of light. A series of successive and decreasing caissons are buried and covered with a colorless glass that is flush with the lawn. Each box contains a play of light which reveals a ring of light on the surface. A timer regulates the ephemeral appearance of these luminous circles, turning them on and off, alternating from largest to smallest. By reproducing the race of the pebble bouncing on the water, it is a fleeting and dematerialized trace that is staged.
Breath of water
Breath of water
Souffle d’eau is an installation produced several times, which stages small square bodies of water very slightly dug, either on stone slabs or directly on the ground. These installations are disguised as fountains and animate a water feature that imitates breathing. The water surface is alternately sucked in and spat out, emptying and filling the basin. This basin, always square, is hollowed out in a slight inverted diamond point (square cone placed on the point). Forcing the water to flow along these flat sides, this small basin empties via a perforated drain at the bottom, in the center of the diamond point. With each aspiration (inspiration) the water disappears from the basin to be collected in a buried and invisible tank. And with each filling (expiration) the water reappears by filling the basin in a new cycle. However, forced to follow the square planes of the walls, the circular waves naturally created by the movement of the water, bouncing against these flat sections, are also transformed into squares. This transformation of the play of round waves and square and concentric waves installs an absurd, or somewhat magical dimension, which allows the work to take off from the pragmatism of matter. The slightly captivating visual effect, reinforced by the symbolism of the alternation of the passage from round to square, invites reflection or meditation, while the allusion to breathing gives water a quality typical of living organisms. . This exercise of squaring the circle also recalls our ancestral link to the primary and creative soup from which we come. In the version commissioned by the GIS, the water, this vital and non-renewable source, is tinted with black ink while the planes of the basin are coated with an image of clear water. This more committed version recalls the fragility of this element and the responsibility that we have, as an endemic species, in the face of the environment in general.
