Michel Blazy Bouquet final, exhibition view, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, 2012. © Michel Blazy / SODRAC (2016)
Photo : Pauline Rymarski, courtesy of Art : Concept, Paris

Cultivating Connections: Michel Blazy’s Ecosystems in Motion

Anthony Divad

Lilian Froger

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Very early in his career, artist Michel Blazy developed a keen interest in living things. He uses diverse materials in his sculptures: plants, orange peels, dog biscuits, carrot purée, toilet paper, shaving foam, and dishwashing detergent, to name but a few.

For the artist, this work has “a relationship with living systems, [but not] with nature.” ¹ 1 - François Piron, “Lignes de travail et points de détail,” interview with Michel Blazy in Michel Blazy, exhibition catalogue (Albi, Cimaise et Portique, et Toulouse: Les Abattoirs, 2003), 7. It is not natural forms themselves, as motifs to be reproduced, that are important for the artist, but rather living beings as models for growth and development, as systems in constant renewal. His acclaimed walls smeared with vegetable purée that dry out and crack over time, or the scaffolded containers in his installation Bouquet final, at Collège des Bernardins (2012), that continuously spew out foam respond to his desire to present works in constant evolution. Some of his installations — more organic than technical — stand out for the light that they shed on the notion of the living, which, in these cases, is neither represented nor suggested, but rather observed and experienced in real time.