NORTHERN EARTH
Etching, December 1993 Series on mines, coal, fossil energy Collective exhibition, Lewarde Center, Douai, 1994
The spiral that descends.
A spiral sinks into the bowels. Mine shaft, telluric vortex, aspirating vortex. The grainy texture of etching – acidic that bites metal – evokes coal dust, matter falling apart, the world crumbling. At the bottom, a blood-red mass. The incandescent coal in the depths. The burning heart of the earth. Or perhaps the blood of miners, the violence of underground work, the open wound in the ground.
December 1993: The end of an era.
The northern mining basin is dying. The wells are closing. The heaps become monuments. An entire industrial civilization discovers its finitude. This downward spiral captures this moment: the sinking into the past, the descent towards what will no longer be.
The low density of the industrial world.
Not the lightness of the digital era that is beginning. But the weight: coal extracted from the depths, steel, bodies at work, sweat and black dust. A physical, telluric, carnal density. The hollow spiral, sinks in, reminds us that this world is literally underground – buried in the galleries as it will soon be buried in memory.
Engrave to not forget.
Etching: engraving, digging, biting the metal as one digs the earth. Ancient technique for an ancient world. The artist’s gesture repeats that of the miner: descend, extract, bring back to light something buried. In 1993, I engrave the downward spiral of coal. Thirty years later, it is the whole era of fossil fuels that vacillates. What seemed local (the closure of the northern mines) was the beginning of a planetary shift. The spiral continues to descend, but on a global scale now.
eau forte on paper