Vincent Ganivet

He says of his practice that it is “a matter of tinkering”. As in a giant construction game, Vincent Ganivet assembles and stacks breeze blocks and bricks, among other unwieldy objects, subverting the codes of the building trade with virtuosity. The artist, now in his forties, long worked on building sites and has kept an obsession with heavy, raw materials. With this cumbersome raw material he raises arches, curves and domes that at times evoke the skeletons of Romanesque cathedrals.

He readily cites Antoni Gaudí: the artist borrows from the Catalan architect the “catenary technique”, or how to keep a concrete arch standing without it collapsing. “Systems rather than sculptures, my productions unfold first of all to my own surprise,” he adds. Viewers, too, will readily be surprised by the astonishing lightness that rises from his works: monumental as it is, his work is never without grace.