Vanities is part of a series of sculptures that Vincent Du Bois dedicates to the perception of time.

The perception of time is one of Vincent Du Bois’ favorite themes. “Vanitas”, a pictorial genre widely applied to still life paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque periods as a symbol of time’s inexorable march and the ephemeral human condition, is reinvested by the artist and transposed into sculpture in various forms.

The frozen water bone or the ricochet arc evoke the paradox of systems that are both fragile and stable, like the complex and mysterious organization of matter that holds life in balance. The ephemeral and perfect waves of the ricochet express the abstract rigor of the gesture while the bone frozen in the ice is only water.

“Urban Bouquet” is a contemporary memento mori that transposes the codes of classic vanity into an urban floral arrangement. With these seven recycled parking meters arranged like a bouquet of cut flowers, it is contemporary time that is staged. A time that we pay for, a space that we rent. A still life therefore, because made up of objects recovered from the scrapyard, and at the same time a capitalist expression of the passing of time.

Vita fugit sicut ombra. VDB’s works on vanities often draw their inspiration from the classic quotations that the Romans engraved on their sundials. Life passes (flees) like the shadow, is an example of this series of aquatic installations. A metal plate with perforated text is placed at the bottom of a channel that passes under a small bridge. Over time, the seaweed from the bottom of the canal forges a passage in the hollowed-out inscription and reproduces the quotation, undulating to the rhythm of the running water. Thus capped by the current, the vegetal inscription seems to dematerialize, accentuating the transient dimension of the human condition.