Agartha

Etienne Semelet’s film opens with admirable views of the Alps; the ones that inspired Edouard Wolton during his creative residency in Megève. The music of the film, by Kevin Jaumotte, has a ‘futuristic western’ feel. With humour, it accompanies the different stages of construction of a surprising sculpture-mountain and resonates with the grandeur of a site that could just as well have inspired Caspar David Friedrich. A painter through and through, Edouard Wolton, too, is inspired by the Sublime and the beauty of Nature, whose motifs he happily appropriates. He also ventures willingly into sculpture and installation. The volume created during his stay is related to geometry, geology, the cosmos and the history of the arts. Without a doubt, these are the sources of inspiration that have led him to this place. Geometry is essential to the base of the structure, and it is a deflection of the baroque and the picturesque that guides him as he wraps it in thick layers of material and shells in a nod to rockery art.
From image to image, fragments of canvases emerge, created in parallel. Artistic gestures apply the pigment, sketch out the pictorial compositions; the link between the outdoor work and that of the studio makes perfect sense, thanks to the film which slips between one and the other as it unfolds, emphasizing, shot by shot, the rhythm of inspiration. With evident force, the elements of the landscape muscle in on the development of the work. They inspire the painter with the motif, guide the composition and reach towards the monumental and the grandiose.