It is always interesting, and sometimes revealing to surprise an artist at work in the studio. This happened the last time I visited Christian Renonciat, in June 2013. Gouge in hand, he was methodically detaching the shavings from a thick panel of ayous wood. His gaze was set only on the panel, nothing else : when he creates, Renonciat does not observe a model, nor does he refer to a preparatory sketch. He is not working in representational art, but in the domain of presentation. “I do not conjure an image to be appreciated by the mind,” he writes, “but matter, consistency, surface, texture, that I set before the body and its senses, directly, without mediation. In a way, I am not providing an interpretation of what is presented, but revealing what is…” This brought me immediately to the heart of Christian Renonciat’s approach, wherein execution and creation are perfectly twined. When this exceptional sculptor “executes” a piece, must we ask what came before the work at hand ? Was there an aesthetic object present in the artist’s imagination before it took form in the real world ? The question, I believe, is of some importance, and we are fortunate that the artist has provided some explanations in this regard : “Without mediation ? Of course not : the wood is the medium, the mediator, the corporeal contact point that shapes the figure in the world. Wood is the joker, a trump card that is the image of the body in the world, a connection, a meeting point, a way to become one with the game ; in a word, feeling” We are given to understand that this artist, like all authentic creators, does not merely observe, but feels from within. At the same time he also experiences the world and leaves room for the physical experiences of the body in a way that specifically does not rely on language. He was filled with certainty, for example, when he launched Carton étendu, écorché, a recent work measuring 175 x 200 cm, hanging behind him in the studio : he was setting forth on a path marked with the milestones of his previous works. He knew that he was following a blazed trail. Something was willing itself into existence, something he had considered in regard to craft, a thing incomprehensible to the uninitiated, for reasons both technical and personal; for the conversation is indeed one that the artist holds with himself (with his own corporeal self, he specifies). Although all of the contours are not known ahead of time, the work demands to be created. But this demand is singular : it is not a vision that Renonciat might have before beginning the execution-creation of the work (at least this is true for the past twenty years ; in the past the artist occasionally used a real object as a starting point). I can easily imagine that before the first chisel is struck, the artist enters a state of grace, because the demand to which he responds is the expression of internal logic : the logical development of advancing technique, the logic of his artistic exploration over the decades and perhaps the reflection of his own spiritual maturity as well. All of these aspects are met in him. This is why, an admiring viewer stands before the resultant work and experiences its reality : the artist, more deeply than other men, is made by making, and makes because he is thereby made. Renonciat does not have a pre-established project, this much is clear, but that in no way implies that he merely gives in to the forces of the unconscious mind. The unconscious is not a creator, whereas the artist is perfectly aware that he is engaging in the act of creation. In the case of Christian Renonciat, we see a man who methodically assembles the instruments of creation, both material and intellectual. But when he takes on a new block of wood, an admirable trick of aesthetic reason comes into play, and it is as if the art were produced within him. Renonciat is truly a body that, literally, is content to be the instrument at the service of internal forces that call on his powers of invention. The demand I spoke of is indeed within him, but it does not proceed from him. Christian Renonciat, a technician of exceptional virtuosity, has heard a call that incites him to make new work, but it is far from certain that he knows quite where this call comes from. This would be a good starting point for a general consideration of aesthetic creation, especially well suited to the work of this artist with philosophic training is his own right. How does art, in order to exist, make use of the artist ? This is a well-known theme, explored by Heidegger, and indeed the subject of all ontology : how being is revealed through man – Sein (“being”) and Dasein (”being-there”). The works of Christian Renonciat offer a remarkable approach to an essential question. What does art reveal ? If art inspires both the viewer and the artist, is it not therefore at the service of being and a kind of manifestation of being ? But let us come back to Renonciat at work : we can see that the act of creation is founded on creation itself, or rather on the resultant object, on the work in process as it takes forms and enters the world. In this fascinating development, the passage from time to space (the artist calls this the étalement du temps – the way time spreads) is reflected in the created object. Renonciat quite consciously chose the title Étendues (the plural nominative form of the verb étendre, to stretch or spread out, and also a word to describe a vast expanse of land) for a series of recent works. This brings him in line with the concept of duration expressed by Bergson : according to the philosopher time does not tick by, but is mobile in nature, and spreads (s’étale) through space. Carton étendu, écorché, hanging near the artist when I visited the studio, expresses this idea. Christian Renonciat has chosen four main themes in recent years, in which his work “is best accommodated”, (preferably five or six chronological periods), although the subject is of little importance to him : cardboard panels, sheets of paper, plastic tarps and wool blankets. Therefore, simply through the initial choice, there is a project, a thought that presides over the making and precedes it. Which leads to a question : is this thought of the work “to be made” equivalent to the thought of the made work ? The project, however strongly it is held, must hold promise ; it gives order to the creation of an idea that is nothing other than the work in waiting. Clearly, Renonciat perceives the work as a being itself, a being that he is charged with bringing forth. We can note that he undertakes this with an ardour that is amplified by the pleasure he finds in creation. The pleasure of caressing the chosen wood should not be confused with desire as a temporal projection. Renonciat describes himself with a touch of humour as floating on his back, like a “plank of wood” in the French expression, mentally bobbing on the still waters of time. This is how his work comes about : it is not his will, but the will of the art to take shape in him. His does have a project, but at the end of the day it is the will of the art moving him. Thus, in the exemplary case of Christian Renonciat, we can see that what moves the artist is his own spirit or génie : the need to give consistency to his universe. At work, the feeling that “it’s not quite there” may propel him ; keep in mind that “there” is an unknown destination. He arrives when the work, finally complete, releases him. On the journey, he explores many paths, experiencing the specific pleasure we spoke of earlier : “Perhaps our task as an artist today is to undertake that quasi-archaeological quest for the traces of humanity within. It is not a scientific quest (with quadrants and grids marking the graduations of time), but a poetic one, perhaps, dreamy and wandering, seeking the body, pleasure, laughter. It is like Ariadne’s Thread winding through the labyrinth…” The artist is only an artist as long as he follows the Golden Thread. He does not think of the idea of the work, he thinks of what he has done as he continues to do it. He is always in touch with the perceptible nature of the work, as the being itself is only accessible through the identification of this perception. He only realises what he sought in his “archaeological” quest when he perceives that it has been achieved, and the artist becomes viewer, completing his pleasure. Creating his works, Renonciat brings them into definitive existence ; they await only his eye, and the eye of the viewer to become aesthetic objects. Sensitivity, petrified in wood, is the very material of the work, marked by the character of the execution/creation. To bloom, sensitivity requires a human touch and is fully true to its nature when produced in joy. “Physical matter : folds, fullness, skin ; the erotic nature of skin. Roundness, matter, maternity, heat, moisture are corporeal characteristics ; the pleasure of self and repetition ; caress. Bodies have animal, foetal, pre-verbal memory ; its elements are water and earth, wool, cloth, the human voice…” The body is always present ; in a kind of connivance it communicates the depth of itself to the work, sounding that interior chord that calls the work into being. Because the idea is born in the spiritual depths, the means of execution spring from this vital source. The hand that guides the chisel transmits grace to sensitivity and makes the aesthetic object possible. This is equally true for Papier déplié, 9 plis, 2002, and for Paquet couverture gansée – Oregon pine, from the same year. Both are “calm” impeccably finished works. But it is also true for works in the Tremor series, begun in 1989. This title expressed “the idea of the fearful trembling experienced by the body when the earth quakes, and the troubling feeling that is a nicer emotion enjoyed when the body is stimulated by eroticism or moved by other sensations.” Here the artist uses bigger gestures and brutal mechanical tools, seeking to “keep the freshness in the gashes and the rough-hewn cuts”. Some are in ayous wood, poplar or lime wood, as usual, and the subject may be a simple box as seen in other works, but here the matter is subject to violence, and appears to be torn irredeemably in two pieces. “The cardboard box is the departure point again, but takes inspiration from primitive, mineral matter : it is like a wooden rock, ridged like volcanic rock broken in a landslide…” We have looked into the ways in which Christian Renonciat approaches creation, but other questions arise, first of all regarding the specificity of his style – and this despite his expressed mistrust of the very notion. As a perfectionist, he believes that what we call style is often “only the result of all of our little mistakes put together”. Yet there are no “mistakes” in the work he signs his name to, so the attitude is paradoxical. Of course Renonciat, unlike Willem de Kooning, has never laid a claim to the “no style position”, but nonetheless there is obviously a style there, and it is worth trying to discern. Let us begin with a large Papier déplié, from the series Pli selon pli, where creases give the very clear impression of sixteen squares. The perfection of execution is of course an opportunity, once more, to exclaim : what craftsmanship ! In art, of course style is related to craft, but craft at the service of artistic expression of the self. Maurice Merleau-Ponty observed that premeditated acts, which require concentration and seek to achieve an effect, may be the best revelation of human spontaneity. Style is where the artist appears. The artist, in this case, likes paper, for example, and this is the matter he seeks to “write”. “Crumpling, rustling, ripping, cracking…, he says, paper whispers in the ear as cardboard speaks to the eye ; a vegetable matter that directly confronts our animal body, our primitive sensations…” Looking at Papier déplié, I indeed detect a certain living relationship between man and the world, in other words – a style. The artist appears to me to be the catalyst that enables the existence of this relationship, not so much for having convoked it, but rather for having experienced it. Renonciat’s style reveals a double necessity, whereas an ordinary object (a cardboard box, a sheet of paper, a blanket…) is only the manifestation of a formal necessity that itself expresses the requirements of an external finality for the object as well as the person who has crafted it. An aesthetic object, by nature (we could also call it a work of art), is the manifestation of both the necessity of a sensitive form subject to purely aesthetic values and the requirements of meaning as first experienced by the artist-creator “as a living fatality”, as André Malraux famously said. The deep originality of Christian Renonciat is rooted in the fact that he himself speaks when he uses wood to speak for paper, paper “folded, unfolded, crumpled, torn, stretched” the voice of which is also heard. Therein hides the secret of his incomparable style.