Les Allières

Charles de Montaigu (Aix-les-Bains, France, 1946)
Collection : Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC)

Though primarily a sculptor, Charles de Montaigu also works in engraving, drawing and painting, which he sees as an offshoot of sculpture. He uses wood – his material of choice – to compose, construct and group elements he has already shaped and structured, as in architecture. His assemblages sometimes combine several types of timber and consist of oblique lines, hollows and contrapposti. For the École des Allières (primary school), he has created an intermixture of straight lines that are attached to the wall and hang from the ceiling, falling in abrupt diagonals and acute angles in the corridor leading to the creative activities workshop. The sculpture, entirely made of ash wood, sketches a teetering relief full of voids and projections. Verging on imbalance, the sculpted form defies gravity, and, with its frozen movement, brings the school’s plain architecture to life. The choice of simple, geometric, minimal forms does not exclude an intuitive relationship with the material and an artisanal approach to woodwork. In the play of beams intersecting and connecting in the space, one gets a sense of Charles de Montaigu’s penchant for an expressive art full of tension and movement.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham

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