1992 Bibliothèque Municipale LILLE (FR)

In 1992, at the Municipal Library of Lille, were presented old slates, engraved and painted, coming from the roof of a cathedral under renovation. Long raised to the sky, they lived in the proximity of the sacred, exposed to invisible prayers as much as to bad weather.
These stones carry a spiritual memory prior to any image. Wear, fossils, strata, traces of rain and frost make up a silent writing. It is about reading it, not correcting it. Looking at these slates is entering a slow time, where the material itself becomes language.
The artistic gesture is not affirmation but listening. Engraving, painting, amounts to standing in attention, responding to what has already been submitted. Each intervention extends a sacred vocation, like a prayer whispered in stone.
Detached from the roof, these slates remain surfaces of elevation. They do not represent the spiritual: they allow it to occur.
In their silence, something watches.