Reiteration 

Sculpture, cherry wood and Wenge, clay, concrete plaster, paint, 2021.

The botanist Francis Hallé has updated an architecture of trees which allows us to establish two types of structures and modes of operation; On the one hand the unitaries with a single architecture in simple form and on the other the "colonials" which are repeated in abundance thanks to a rejection which forms on the trunk or branch and whose roots are embedded under the bark. and very quickly reach the ground.

  This work shows the phenomenon of reiteration of the tree which, "metamerized" (the body is made up of a set of unit parts, leaves and roots) can be  (re) train indefinitely from the basic module and survive independently of any vital organs. The dead tree, a cherry tree,  is here taken from a clay sarcophagus made of casts of the trunk. These elements presented independently constitute a kind of genetic or memory imprint of its terrestrial envelope. The tree seems to be resuscitated from death by the spontaneous emergence of the main body, cubic modules in Wenge wood, minimal units of many human constructions. These hollowed-out volumes extract themselves from the fixity in which the tree is immersed to breathe a second breath of life into it. Their architectural forms echo human activity and its hold on nature. Fine engravings inscribed in the ends of the stump representing shapes in perspective reinforce this idea. This lifeless, uprooted body  appears mummified in a concrete plaster, revealing the initial shapes constituting the very identity of this plant specimen.     in it  protecting it from degradation makes it immune to any  terrestrial temporality to inscribe it in eternity. The tree enters the world of the divine. Spiritual elevation is evoked by petrified roots and escaping volumes  of the initial sculpture.

The tree, if we pay attention to it, reveals a lot of ourselves and imposes itself as a subject in itself that goes beyond the simple object of representation. Its mode of operation is in itself a functioning of creation. The tree alive, is a distinguished artist who goes beyond human experience and if there is nothing purely human in a tree, there is a tree in all human life. From the most primitive habitat, to our furniture, our utensils, to the oxygen we breathe, everything originates in the tree. To work from a dead stump is to reveal this body which during its life has never ceased to tame death by being itself at maturity made up of dead tissue which, far from annihilating it, gives it strength and structure.

"  We are not only accompanied by them, they take care of us and shape us. Their body is with us and in us, in the most unexpected forms… /… we live through his body and thanks to his body »» E.Coccia