Our universe
"My most beautiful journeys, I made them on my couch."
Yves Saint Laurent
This is my motto. The most beautiful inspirations are born from reverie and contemplation. I draw more from museums and literature than from travel itself, from what art deposits within us when we take the time to look at it.
Time and memory
What time leaves behind
A theme runs through all my work: the passage of time, memory. I love the look of old walls, the processes of wear and tear, the textures left by centuries. The churches of Sicily, almost erased lettering and mottos that bear witness to ancient times, destroyed friezes and bas-reliefs.
Feelings from a stroll, a form of urban museum, a blend of past and present. It is this material that I seek to capture in metal.
Matter
Textures
If anything defines me, it's textures. A unique treatment of metal, and a particular way of setting stones. These textures are rooted in very ancient objects.
Crinkled gold was born from the discovery of buried objects, of death masks placed in tombs five centuries BCE. Gold became a dented sheet, and it is from this image that my crinkled approach to metal originated.
The way I set stones comes from the same gesture. The result of wear must be imperceptible, like a jewel that has been worn for a very long time: a serrated, organic setting, a gentle erosion that gives the effect of years of presence on the skin.
The Cyclades rings all bear these organic textures. In their treatment, they borrow a form of timelessness from ancient Greek jewelry.
Transmutation
From lead to gold
There is also, in the background, medieval and alchemical imagery. The primitive paintings of the 14th and 15th centuries, these wealthy figures wearing several rings on their hands. And alchemy, the transmutation of lead into gold, from which the dragon, the phoenix come.
What interests me in this transmutation is its inner dimension. A self-evolution, rather than spirituality or energy. Per aspera ad astra: through arduous paths, to the stars.
The talisman
An armor
The mottoes evoke coats of arms and escutcheons, those found on the pediments of buildings: shields, unicorns, griffins, dragons, the sword, the diamond. Weapons to fight. For life is a battle, and the jewel, like a talisman, becomes its tool.
It gives the strength to face the outside world. It becomes part of oneself, like armor. And it answers a need: to be gently armed for what life demands.
The jewel has a life cycle. We take it off, we put it back on; it integrates into existence as a series of specific moments, almost a ceremony.
An image
Wings of Desire
Some of my rings bear the names of the characters from Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders' film. A way of letting an image, a gaze, subtly enter the material.
