NEWSLETTER

© krijn giezen

In 1994, the “Ateliers d’Ete de Cergy-Pontoise”invited the artist to create a work on the theme “City-Nature” He responded with a Project called : “Construction-destruction”
At that time, the complex of La Defense, built 30 years earlier, was experiencing the demolition of some of its original buildings. The artist considered that this meant that the city was moving into a new phase, and suggested it could be celebrated by creating a site to illustrate the cycle of construction/destruction that could become some sort of sanctuary for the old materials.
There are sand and gravel quarries located in the midst of an urban area on the other side of the river Seine. These materials were used in the construction of the buildings, and their extraction had left some “wounds” in the landscape. The artist’s proposal was to reuse these abandoned quarries to redeposit the materials from the demolition. The artist was thereby creating a “memorial” to La Defense, by bringing back the construction materials to their original site, and closing the cycle of their use and life. At the same time, he was “healing the wounds” that had been inflicted to the landscape.
The original theme of “City-Nature” now becomes “City, back to Nature.”