Sculpture : les bronzes célestes de Lavarenne à Théoule-sur-Mer

Some fear that the sky will fall on their heads. Nicolas Lavarenne is used to saying that it is art that has fallen on him. When this young artisan artist from Nice, wood sculptor, discovers bronze, the public will discover that he has gold at the tip of his fingers. His sculptures on rods will then take off, travel the world and challenge the sky. Precisely, point of worship and sculpture, it is now. Nicolas Lavarenne, everything often starts with a drawing, with you. It always starts with a drawing, from I don't know where. Often people ask me, but where does your inspiration come from? I say, if I knew, it would be terribly comfortable. When I try to draw, I tell myself, today I'm going to draw. Nothing really interesting comes out. And then sometimes, thinking about something else, or on the phone, or drinking coffee in the morning, my hand starts a drawing that evolves. Then, as if I were coming out of a dream, there is a sculpture that appears. That's it, it comes to me like that. Maybe that's what is called inspiration. And then we really see it in these models, in these sculptures, the place of these rods, they are everywhere. Yes, it's almost the identity of my work, and that's what still fascinates me. So I work around this theme. I say, attempt to elevate. I say, I don't know, these rods, they propel towards the sky, they give a dynamic. Afterwards, everyone sees what they want. The artist proposes, the viewer has it. And he makes his own story. I'm not always there to explain. So in a large part of your workshop, we see sculptures with rods, but we also see them appear with wires. Yes, it's a bit like the latest evolution of my work. I always have this urge to have a need for celestial or aerial. And recently, my pieces are only held by a wire. So for me, symbolically, they are closer to the sky. The sky, symbolically, is also the spirit. And in this attempt to elevate, it's this attempt to detach the material and to bring it closer to the sky and to the spirit. It seems that the process you use is not recent. It's called the lost wax. Yes, it's the lost wax foundry. We date the process, I think, from 5,000 years or something like that. 2,000 years before Jesus Christ. And what is the principle? The principle is that the sculptor creates a sculpture, let's say, made of plaster, earth, stone, wood. Then we mold this sculpture. And in the mold, we pull a piece of wax, like this. This wax is then drowned in refractory cement. We put it all in an oven. The wax will melt and we will pour the bronze instead of the wax. We break the refractory cement and we get the bronze. This is summarized in a supersonic way. Yes, because how long does it take? Some time. And why do you perpetuate this technique? It allows you to make very, very complex pieces with a lot of detail. A fingerprint comes out on the wax. You can see all these details. All this comes out. And these are monoblock molds, so a single part. I'm talking about the refractory mold. And you've been doing this for a long time, both of you? We've been working together for 32 years. And we've made more than 1,200 bronze pieces together. We reproduce the action in nature. We reproduce the oxidation with an acid salt. In a few minutes, with the temperature and the acid salt. You can imagine how long it takes to make the whole thing. You have to heat it all up. It's a very precise job. The two, Foncheur and Fondeur. Are you talking about yourself? Yes, for me, yes. And for Nicolas Lamarenne? He's more like Foncheur. Confronted. We're talking about his work. His work, yes. How is he confronted? In relation to his creation, his staging. Active. For me. And for him. And also active. But maybe also thoughtful. Because in creation, you have to be thoughtful. Often, I tell myself, I don't want to do like. I do what comes to me. I don't take a picture and try to reproduce it. I don't know why, but my mind makes drawings. Then, when I look at the drawings, I say to myself, where does this come from? And then, yes, deep down, I find something. For example, in this case, the fights. Yes, there's a boxing gesture. In all the sports, there's about the same gesture. But then, there's the symbolism of the fight. That's what I like. What is life? You can have it like a teddy bear. You can also have it like a fight. That is, everything, you do it by putting all your energy into it. And all your... That's it, all your energy. And sometimes, it's difficult. You really have to go for it. Otherwise, you give up and it doesn't work. So, there's this symbolism. For me, all these gestures are symbolic. For me, they speak to me. Then, the spectator, some of them tell me, it's the Olympic Games. So, I say, yes, it's like the Olympic Games. It's the human being who tries to surpass himself.