Like a nucleus, a journey of the spirit – Jean-Luc Vilmouth

Comme un noyau, un voyage de l’esprit [Like a nucleus, a journey of the spirit], Jean-Luc Vilmouth, 2011

2011, Le Fort Vauban de Saint-Vincent-les-Forts, Route de l’art contemporain – VIAPAC, bronze, pierre

With this installation of a bronze scale model representing Saint-Vincent Fort in accordance with the original plans (before 1880), Jean-Luc Vilmouth offers the visitor the possibility of seeing the entire Vauban architecture, of which some parts are not visible by the public, during a visit to the fort. The sculpture also corresponds to a work of memory which reveals the worn parts that are ruined by time or have even disappeared. Thus the artist proposes to the public to reconstitute and reconstruct these gaps in our memory. The change of scale allows a “voyage of the spirit”, in reference to a Chinese poet who, when contemplating a stone, says he “went on a mystical hike”.

The artist Jean-Luc Vilmouth (1952-2015) was born in Creutzwald in France. His work uses various media – installation, photography, sculpture and video – and functions by series, particularly the series of “nuclei” including the Saint-Vincent-les-Fort work. In his first projects, Vilmouth occupied abandoned and dilapidated places. His works are thus reactions to these places. He later focussed his work on everyday objects by a technique that aims to give them a new dimension by distorting them and staging them, thereby questioning the relationship that we have with them and their place in our environment.

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