Nathalie Rey

The original meaning of the French word carotte is "carrot". By a formal analogy, this word has come to designate a sample of drilling. My previous work makes reference to a recent history that mixes historical memory (the Shoah) and individual memory (with the theme of childhood). With Carotte, however, the focus has shifted from human time to geological time.

On one hand, we have an object that represents a sample of earth with its strata. It is also a column, which by its size and predominately white color, evokes classical architecture.

To this formal dimension, a symbolic point can be added: the sample indicates the succession of geological eras that are measured in thousands of years. On this scale, the place occupied by the human history is negligible—the very last strata, the most superficial... Thus, the sculpture also subtly refers to both humanity’s insignificance and its vulnerability.

With the graphic works, I was interested in relating the Carotte to human scale. A column is a piece of architecture, a human creation. In these drawings, it appears isolated, a fragment of a missing edifice, broken in one case, partly covered in the other, almost transparent in an evanescent landscape: an extremely fragile vision, one that is almost unreal, about to disappear.

This way, as this cycle shows within the installation, the oppositional concepts meet. Time accumulates, time destroys. Human constructions and memory are doomed to ruin. And so the artist builds and destroys his work, erects a monument, breaks it and starts all over again. Birth and destruction end up merging.