Michel GAUTIER

I am optimistic because there are too many reasons to be pessimistic, says Michel Gautier, in a burst of laughter while giving us his hand like one presents a mirror and invites us to follow him. The duality of this world has always been his raw material. Everything is within us, he says, while almost excusing himself. You, it is I. And nobody is too small, he hammers out with the point of his chisel. It turns, it turns, it never stops, sings another Michel. So, lets circle around the sculptures of Gautier which pass-passing separated-torn, unified-appeased. Duality. Duel or duo? Of course both! I am hunched over with my fear. I am twisted with my pain. I buttress myself, suffocating. I am choreographed by the misery. But, finally, I, who displays myself, offers myself, no longer afraid, no longer hurting. I who open up, open up, it never stops. Yin-Yang: always separated, always together. I am you us them and so much more, so much? Time does not exist, says Michel, as the years pass, his work establishes itself. And there he goes back to look for the traces of this truth buried at the heart of stone, wood, coral, metal (today it is bronze, who knows what it will be tomorrow) but especially of humans so that he can prove it to us. Then he pours this truth softly or violently, unified or fragmented. And comes to show us: Look, he says, feel! It beats, it taps, it?s there, here, now, always, it never stops? The inexpressible path, indescribable, that he invites us to follow, melted in bronze? To melt into the mirror, we are a reflection, a burst of this voice which howls or murmurs this evidence before the words, this life-dance before the body, this empty-dense before death: it pours, it pours, it never tops ................................................... Malo Gries (January 2003)