Transfiguration
“One of today’s foremost contemporary artists. Hypnotic in his designs, and what is more – in his performance.” Le Nouvelle Observateur, 2014
Transfiguration is a story of the artist’s unfulfilled longing to breathe life into his creation. In a gesture of desperation the sculptor, painter and performer Olivier De Sagazan sculpts clay onto his head, burying himself in the material, eradicating his identity and becoming a living work of art. Yet the material blinds him and he is forced to look inward, into the very depths of himself.
In a fascinating and expressive performance of totality, Sagazan changes identities on stage – from man to animal and from animal to various hybrid creatures. He pierces, obliterates and unravels the layers on his face in a frenzied search for new essence and form. In this regard Sagazan has stated “I am flabbergasted in seeing to what degree people think it’s normal, or even trite, to be alive.” In Transfiguration he gives new meaning to the notion of life, offering a captivating, disturbing and stirring glimpse into an alternative selfhood utterly unconstrained by inhibition.
Olivier De Sagazan, born in the Congo and raised in France, is a biologist by training who more than two decades ago began to delve into art. In his work, Sagazan examines his body as well as the structures which come to define the individual such as the dictates of society, culture and history. Through the creative process, he forges and then peels away the layers of clay, until a wild, primordial and liberated individual is laid bare. Transfiguration was created in 1999, as a series of works dealing with the search for the shamanistic, animalistic and untamable essence of human nature.
Performer: Olivier de Sagazan / Artistic manager: Gaelle de Sagazan
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