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«Sphere of turbulence» - 2008 -"Stratus Locus" Exhibition - The Cryptoporticus - Reims

Inflatable sphere, ø 3 m, black/white digital print (unique piece) - private collection -

This monumental sculpture, shaped like the Earth, exposes the void that constitutes it. Silent and weightless, the images of turbulent meteors visible on the sphere's surface, though static, come alive when a visitor approaches and brushes against it. The slightest breath makes it sway. Silence completes it, air shapes it. 14 cubic meters of breath, 14,000 liters of air, one day of life... This transparent sculpture is a bubble of air floating at the center of an enclosed space. Its lightness is proportional to its size. On February 27, 2007, storms, typhoons, cyclones, thunderstorms, stratus/nimbus/cumulus clouds... encircled the Earth. The sphere materializes these atmospheric conflicts. One image for 24 hours of meteoric fury. One image in time for a movement. This floating object presents itself as the synthesis of a day and a telluric cycle. This “sphere of turbulence” is the projection screen that seems to have absorbed and recorded the minute movement of the celestial body's rotation, of which we are merely fleeting guests. The earth is, here, empty. Only the conflict of fluids and the immaterial energy of flows make it visible. Turbulent water vapors combine, in a single image, a spectral apparition and the representation of a physical phenomenon. Impressions of silver, gray, black, and white flows play with the sunlight that irradiates them, revealing, through superimposition, a mummified chaos. This “ocular” globe sways to the rhythm of presences, revealing the silence that surrounds it; like Foucault's pendulum, it discreetly reminds us that the earth rotates, and that we are but transient visitors. “The sphere of turbulence” is a suspended parenthesis of silence; it vibrates and trembles only to the sounds of the voice, to the mere breaths of our movements.