Art is the idea we have of beauty speaking to the senses and emotions. The artist is the person who has a sense of beauty and can create a work of art. Ego is the self-awareness of the artistic self, the source of inspiration for the creation of beauty. For the creation of L’Homme Pensant, I wanted to consider these definitions. It is a distorted representation of the beauty, the impossible outcome of creation, a kind of non-beauty. It had to be a kind of inner cry, an inner malaise, hence the distorted physique of the character of Ego. The installation entitled L’Homme Pensant is made up of ten sculptures representing the busts of screaming men. The idea is to reverse the notion of classical beauty: the artist, used to creating Beauty as his primary goal, is now called upon to represent the absence of beauty itself. As opposed to the traditional plaster cast galleries displaying pure white human figures, harmonic in features and proportions, these men are screaming, trapped in unknown bodies not recognized as theirs. Showered with gold paint, the busts are finally ennobled with a brand-new status.

Didier Guillon, May 2022