This project was presented within the framework of the May of the Artists 2012 of the City of Argenteuil, on the theme "the Movement and the City". He was selected and he received creative assistance.
This subject on movement and the city evokes, for me, the necessary urban transformation, through a real Harmonic mutation which must put Man back in the City. A city to the size of its inhabitants, their needs.
This requires the technical improvement of their living environment, the architecture of the buildings, the means of communication, the resolution of the problem of difficult neighborhoods.
By creating a center that shines in its neighborhoods, like a village square from which everything is organized and organized. Each district being part of a whole: the City.
" The city "
(2012)
It also involves the means that make it possible to smooth out the social and economic difficulties of its inhabitants. Argenteuil is a city which has an important diversity at the same time cultural and social and, in view of its differences must exploit its richness. City where we will turn to the other by fighting the inclinations of community withdrawal, ghettoisation, by the application of a global project where each will have to find its place. Development, not only social, but also cultural and artistic, gives a deeper meaning and an additional dimension to simple belonging to a territory.
In addition, registering Man in the city also means arranging the architectural space so that his body is integrated into it. A reflection on human behavior will impose, in the construction, the necessary balance of volumes, their dimensions and proportions. Which leads us to establish a grid of Right Measure. Measure which would be based on the "Golden Ratio", which is neither a measure, nor a dimension but which designates an arithmetic and geometric relationship (1.618) between two quantities. Measure that still use today, to build, in particular the master carpenters. We find this relationship in man as well as in the plant and animal world.
It is around this reflection and the essential notion of harmony that my creative work has been articulated, which you will find in detail in the following pages. The dimension of the work is calculated from the golden number, indeed for a height of 2.51m, the length is 4.06m (2.51 x 1.618) in order to pose Balance and Harmony as the founding principle of this stained glass sculpture.
The idea that animates the work starts from the observation that the city is no longer on the scale of man, creator of anguish and bad living, must disappear. It is through the symbolism of children's drawings that this need for renewal is expressed. It is they, by their proximity to the state of nature that can help us find the keys to this transformation. The theme of the sun and the star in the panel THE SUN, is there to remind us of the rules of balance and harmony which must govern the reconstruction. The screen inserted in this panel will broadcast a video made from testimonies of children from schools in Argenteuil. From the conception of their "ideal city" and from their drawings. But also with the testimonies of former Argenteuillais, on the history of their city, its evolution and also with old photographs.
The NATURE panel expresses the necessary return to the principles and laws of natural harmony symbolized here by the plant wall and the water wall, which connect man to nature, from which he often forgets that it comes from it. .
The final panel expresses the resolution of the problem: to create a city the size of Man who places him at the center of this city. A city in the image of Man, which meets his needs and aspirations.