Couch Sculptures

Louis Durot was born in Paris on April 22, 1939. He was something of an enfant terrible, and managed to be expelled from various schools for bad conduct. His ambition, as stated to his parents, was to earn money without having to work, and for a time, he was an “escort-boy” for a Parisian Grande Dame. He did, however, manage to get a good education in spite of himself, and received his Baccalaureate degree from Lycee Louis Pasteur in 1956. In 1960, he enrolled in the Facultie de Sciences, where he studied mathematics. He terminated his math studies in 1963, and turned his attention to engineering, working for Equipel, where he was responsible for calculating and measuring resistance for prototype nuclear generators. Equipel became a research facility, and offered Durot the opportunity to study organic chemistry. Durot directed numerous research projects for Equipel between 1966 and 1972. During this time, in fact, starting in 1964, he made many friends in the art world, gathering together artists from a variety of disciplines to form an artists commune — the Freelane Studio. Among the members were jazz journalist Gilles Brinnon, and a young painter, Jean Ihallero — a friend of the painter Maxime Defert. Through them, he met the artist Francois Arnal, who was interested in Durots’ engineering expertise for his sculptures. They got on well, and worked together for two years. Also in this circle were the actress Micheline Presle and the actor Daniel Gelin. In 1968, Arnal and Presle created Le Festival de Theatre de Chateauvallon, and through this, Durot became friends with the noted film director Ulysse Reynaud. In 1966, Francois Arnal introduced Durot to the artist Cesar, with the idea that Durot’s talents as a chemical engineer would be useful. Durot spent a year helping Cesar to master the techniques of working with polyurethane foam, with Durot searching for ways to make this fragile and ephemeral substance more stable and permanent, and more amenable to control. Cesars’ first works in this medium were flat, due to the difficulty of controlling the foam, but he went on to create his famous “expansions”. In 1968, Durot conceived a project to create more three-dimensional sculptures following a simple and precise design. It was during this time that Durot made his first polyurethane sculptures — the Champignons and Plantes Carnivores. Also in 1968, he He opened his first technical studio at 35, rue Leon. In order to support this new endeavor,( he needed more space, equipment, time and money), he created La Societe Durgalith. 1971 saw the Durat’s first works exhibited at the Salon Batimat in Paris. With this exhibition, Durot was hoping to attract the attention of architects with whom he could collaborate. Between 1971 and 1974, Durot created sixty sculptures inspired by fantastical “alien” life, mushrooms, and carnivorous plants. In 1974, Durot”s Societie Durgalith ran into problems with the Italian firm that owned Batimat. Credit Lyonnaise seized his studio and many of his sculptures, and quite a number of them were destroyed. This same year, Durot worked with the architects Sloan and Lecouter on an inflatable structure for the Pavillion Franaise in Osaka. Unfortunately, the project was never realized. Durot continued to pursue his research on polyurethanes, and gained world-wide recognition for his developments in this field. In 1977, a “student prank” had un-expectedly bad consequences. Durot was employed as an engineer at L’Usine Francaise de la Monnaie (the French mint) in Pessac. He took three kilos of “blanks”, and used them for playing slot-machines. For this, he spent seven weeks in jail, which was ended by an amnesty granted by Mitterand in 1981. During Durot’s time in prison, he took up weight-lifting, and also designed his next generation of sculptures. The spirals, feet, lips, and a series of erotic chairs...

The art on the wall is not the piece of metal. The art is the way your eyes read the space created by the light reflecting off the surface. These panels have effects that are dramatic and immediately apparent and another level of perception that is only apparent with prolonged study. Letting one’s eyes relax and simply gazing will yield bits of reflected light that curve away and behind other objects, swirls and shimmering lines that lift into the space in front of the surface. Aside from the dimensionality, these pieces can function like a diffraction grating—if one looks closely all hues of the spectrum can be seen on the surface. These are light sculpture, objects that change exactly the way sculpture changes as one walks around it. They are not meant to represent things. They are themselves and invite you to get to know and understand them. On the outside Bruce R. MacDonald’s work seems like frozen video displays lifted from the walls of some 22nd Century environment; while on the inside they have the detailing and complexity of sun sparkles on the ocean, the diversity of the forest floor, maps of some celestial event or pure abstractions of a particular moment of organic consciousness. The artist graduated with a degree from Haverford College in 1981 and decided to create physical objects. “After college I was tired of only having sheets of paper to show for long days of work. With metal, after forty hours, I had something tangible, something that would survive, and something that might be here forever.” The Museum of Science and Industry in London featured his helix CD rack...

Beautiful elephant water color painting on unique book canvass. The two artists and industrial designers made the canvass with extinct and unused encyclopedia books in order to give ...

Cast Iron #86 by Hanneke Beaumont Beaumont's sculptures are realized in terracotta, bronze and cast iron, and she is known for sculpting figural life...

Hard Carved Afghani blue Lapis Alia Ali is a Yemeni-Bosnian-US multi-media artist. Her work explores cultural binaries, challenges culturally sanctioned oppression, and confronts th...