Project put in place by the l’Atelier Artistique du Béton for Studio Jean Nouvel
Enlisted as a sculptor on AAB’s team, I participated in the construction of this concrete fissure, giving it the appearance of a pudding stone, a conglomerate of mud and gravel pebbles, which form the real Vallon Obscur, north of Nice. To create the vegetal wall, we had to integrate reserves of water and troughs to enable the cultivation and growth of plants in the space.
Not long ago, I was interviewed at the Gare de Nantes by a local journalist. The journalist asked me how to best describe my contribution to the concrete tree sculpture; as an artist or an artisan? Normally, this type of question would have left me speechless, had I not thankfully prepared a very polite, very vague answer:
“we are a bit of both”