Untitled (Richard Lemieuvre), Stéphane Vigny, 2013

EDF pole, cemented glass slabs/ production Piacé le Radieux

Stéphane Vigny's piece, which he has been working on for 10 years, draws on both so-called scholarly art and popular art, all of which are closely intertwined in the artist's art of ideas. Part of Vigny's reflection on "modified objects", this electric pole (which was first produced by Garzinsky Traploir, a company based in Sarthe, France, after the First World War, and then discontinued) features stained-glass alcoves using a technique of "grafting and juxtaposition", in the words of the artist. In effect, he is bringing together very different worlds (that of industrial and serial production and that of religious architecture) through a system of analogy: the cells in the posts are reminiscent of the shape of Romanesque round-headed windows. In this way, he creates a strong link between his work and the church in Piacé, whose stained glass windows were made using the cemented (rather than leaded) glass slab technique developed in the 1930s - at the very time when Le Corbusier and Bézard were thinking about the Centre coopératif and the Ferme radieuse.

Stéphane Vigny uses the pole's perfect match of form and function to highlight a subtle interplay of correspondences: the pole, although deprived of its electrification, still reveals the light when it passes through the stained-glass windows (which themselves are revealed by the play of light). Thanks to this play of resonance, Stéphane Vigny evokes the particular passage in the history of spirituality represented by the electrification of churches from the 19th century onwards. Installed not far from a real network, the artist's work gives the impression of having always been part of the landscape, challenging its status as sculpture. Rather than a piece of contemporary art, this pole evokes the world of folk art, a little-known creative genius based on the practices of recovery and re-appropriation that lead to the placing of a plate on a wall, or the re-use of tyres to make planters.

Stéphane Vigny's research therefore focuses on the vernacular, and he himself considers that he participates in folklore while drawing inspiration and the creative process from it. In his view, "the imagination is in the doing", which is why the creative act is so important in his work; it is the creative act that determines the final appearance of the work in relation to the initial project. The electricity pole is a raw material that Stéphane Vigny regularly diverts and modifies (reduced, lying on the ground during an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, ....), but the work at Piacé is the first to turn this type of object into a kind of symbol close to a totem pole, making a lasting mark on the landscape while at the same time becoming fully part of the history of the places where it is presented.

Text by Roma Lambert