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Biography

Creative Spirit Nurtured through Wandering and Changes: A Discussion on Pierre Cerviotti's Creations

 

Written by Hong Weiser

 

 

It is hoped that my creative career can unfold like a book and people catch a glimpse of my life journey through these artworks.

Pierre Cerviotti

 

Bronze sculptures—their forms and shapes often brimming with bold imagination and dramatic tension—constitute a major part of Pierre Cerviotti's artistic creations. From flying horses gliding across the sky, to women transforming into guitars or tree bark bearing physical traits of human bodies, the themes of his artworks are often inspired by stories from mythology, his concern for the broader ecological environment, or his personal observation of current events in society. Whether his creations are portrayed with a realistic approach or a surreal style, they all evidence Cerviotti's precise anatomic knowledge, sophisticated skills in terms of producing life like sculptures, and unique narrative perspective. This celebration of life can also be perceived from the miscellaneous variety of gestures and postures displayed in his works.

 

Cultivation that Transcends Geographical Boundaries

Born in 1960 in Mulhouse, a city located in the east of France, Pierre Cerviotti became acquainted with stone sculpting at the age of twenty, which in turn helped trigger his interest in artistic creation and brought him to the Ecole Supérieure d'Art Avignon to study the art of sculpting. Instead of embarking on his creative career immediately after graduation, he decided to first travel around the world while working along the way. Ten years of traveling eventually landed him in Monte Carlo as he turned 30, and there he was hired by Blake Ward, a Canadian sculptor who owned a local studio in the region. Cerviotti worked as an assistant for Ward over the course of 5 years. This left him with solid artistic training, and made him proficient in using a wide range of sculpting materials such as ceramic, gypsum plaster, resin, wax, bronze, and Carrara marble. He later went on to officially obtain an artist certificate in France and began his own artistic career. Not only did he work with renowned foundries like the Italy-based Venturi Arte and the Paris-based Godard, but also held solo exhibitions in countries like France, Spain, Japan, and the Netherlands, where he gained widespread acclaim.

 

At first, Cerviotti's creations reflected what he had learned from Ward's instruction and guidance. Nonetheless, as time elapsed, his experiences of traveling around the globe, as well as the open-minded attitude he adopted when exploring different cultures started to have a more obvious influence on his artwork, and eventually led to the discovery of his own artistic style. Cerviotti's career as an artist is, in fact, nothing short of a diverse cultural documentation that transcends geographical boundaries. Having a fondness for exotic cultures, he converted from Catholicism—a religious belief shared by his family—to Japanese Buddhism when he was still young, and this decision caused him to develop profound interest in Eastern cultures. The fact that he had been to so many different places also helped broaden his horizons, further distinguishing his creations from Ward's when it comes to the choice of subject matter. It is possible, therefore, to experience in Cerviotti's artwork the cultural appeal from sculptures of Japanese samurai and monks in conjunction with artistic content reminiscent of Greek and Roman mythology. Following his settlement in Taiwan in 2013, the natural elements found in the island's ecosystem have also become a source of inspiration to him. More specifically, his enthusiasm and engagement in the study of Southeast Asian vegetation enabled him to shape tree bark sculptures based on close observation of the texture and color of various bark of trees. Used as materials, these sculptures were later integrated into his other creations, developing over time into an artistic language unique to Cerviotti.

 

Besides sculpting, Cerviotti has also engaged in painting, using carving knives and paints for sculpting to try to convey two-dimensional concepts that 3D artwork may fail to deliver. Through abstract expressions such as color, lines, planes, and texture, he attempts to convey his study of the mottled hues that spread across the surfaces of tree bark or aged walls, as well as his understanding toward calligraphy. His paintings, as a consequence, often manifest rich layers of colors, a result achieved by overlapping numerous and intricate strokes repeatedly.

 

Creative Drive Propelled by Pursuit of the Sublime

The aesthetic forms found in Cerviotti's artwork can be boiled down to three main categories, including non finito aesthetics, surrealism, and montage structure, as introduced respectively below:

 

Cerviotti has been deeply influenced by the non finito aesthetics that characterize Michelangelo's and Rodin's works. Or perhaps he was moved by observing, during his childhood years, his grandfather work diligently despite losing one arm. His creations do not aim to showcase the completeness or integrity of subjects, but rather an incompleteness that causes these sculptures to seem broken. This "beauty of incompleteness" bestows the final products with a background journey, making them look like classical sculptures that have endured the passage of time. It also provides room for imagination through those missing parts, while highlighting the main point for viewers to focus on.

 

Another thing to be noted is that Cerviotti also leaves a part of his subjects' forms unprocessed when creating sculptures, allowing viewers to appreciate the transition of an artwork from the raw material it begins with to the figurative guise it takes on afterwards. This "beauty of process" reminds viewers of how life itself comes into existence from the materials lying in front of them. By disrupting the enjoyment of artistic content, non finito aesthetics encourage viewers to shift their focus back to the form of the artwork, redirecting their attention to the sculpting skills and the artistic expression of the artist instead.

 

If Cerviotti's adoption of non finito aesthetics can be seen as a tribute to classical art, then his surrealist creations can be said to carry with them more of his personal thoughts and emotions. This type of artwork is mainly created using a mixture of different materials, a technique that not only aims to deliver the concept that all life forms are interconnected, but also the idea of "the oneness of all beings".

 

Cerviotti’s "Arbre écorce" series features an assemblage technique that puts together pieces of bronze made in the form of tree bark. This experience later prompted him to utilize another semi-automatic method known as the "Random bronze casting" technique to embark on the creation of his new "Monolith" series. There are two crucial factors that contributed to this decision: for one thing, he wanted to create one-of-a-kind bronze sculptures that would be impossible to replicate; for another, he wanted to personally finish all the processes required during bronze sculpture creation rather than hand them over to foundry workers. From molding, dewaxing, sculpting, and coloring, to the completion of a bronze sculpture, Cerviotti is one of those few sculptors who can single-handedly complete all the procedures required without help from others. In fact, he decided to move his studio to Caotun Township, Nantou County in 2016 so that he could live in close proximity to the foundry he works with. It was also during that time that he started carrying out experiments with the liquefied bronze technique.

 

Ever since he was little, Cerviotti has been fond of observing lava. In his opinion, flickering flames and flowing lava are the ultimate representation of catastrophic forces and unpredictable outcomes. Cerviotti's adoption of a semi-automatic method like the Random bronze casting technique is nothing but an attempt to trigger random circumstances amidst a creative process that escapes full control, making it impossible for the produced shapes to be re-created by using the same technique. This explains why Cerviotti enjoys producing molten bronze by himself in the foundry; bronze nuggets placed on a sand mold liquefy at over 1,000-degree heat, flowing in random directions before finally solidifying into bronze pieces of diverse shapes. Cerviotti manages to discover peculiar forms from the processing of this uncontrollable liquid bronze.

 

From non finito aesthetics and surrealism to the later development of Random bronze casting creation, it is not difficult to see that Cerviotti's artistic journey has been driven by his pursuit of the sublime—a kind of state sought through constantly surpassing and enhancing the status quo. When incorporated into artistic works, this concept is often expressed through a sense of strength, uncertainty, or culmination, striking viewers with awe that further evolves into a feeling of the sublime. Influenced by this idea, Cerviotti's artworks tend to put aside visually pleasant qualities such as elegance, order, and stability, replacing them with elements of indescribable strangeness and chaos, which also set apart his creative style.

 

Cerviotti's creative career has since entered a whole new stage. Before such transformation took place, he used to start working on a sculpture by shaping clay with his bare hands, a process that allowed him to communicate his creative thoughts and emotions through touch. This was then followed by sculpting procedures that helped emphasize the contour and details of the art piece. Nowadays, however, he employs the montage technique to create an assemblage out of usable parts that he manages to uncover from unused materials or unfinished products abandoned in the past, so that they can be later merged with bronze pieces made using the liquefied bronze technique. After a series of processes like cutting, wielding, and hammering, Cerviotti puts together enigmatic figures somewhere between real and illusory. Cerviotti no longer tries to simulate the reality perceived at the surface level, but uses bronze pieces as his own vocabulary to embark on a coding game that involves symbols. The concept behind this type of work is, in Cerviotti's words, that "nothing is ever lost or created; it's merely a makeover of what already existed".

 

Life Constituted by Random Circumstances

Cerviotti's creations reflect the wanderings that have made up a large portion of his life. As an artist who enjoys traveling around to observe different cultures while exploring what local nature has to offer, he has a habit of keeping track of what he encounters along the way. As far as he is concerned, starting to create something new is like going on an adventure, but that doesn't mean he throws away what's been accumulated from the past. On the contrary, he constantly looks back to find usable materials and turn them into fuel to push creation forward. It is through these constant creative practices that he has eventually succeeded in developing his own visual language.

 

In addition, his concern for human existence has caused his creations to focus on conveying the tenacity of life, regardless of whether the artwork itself is a dancing figure or a mythological recount. His "Monolith" series goes even further to express the idea that, instead of being lonely individuals isolated from other forms of life, all living beings on Earth are inextricably interconnected with one another. His adoption of the liquefied bronze technique also implies that he sees the nature of life as something that derives from a mixture of random circumstances, which inevitably results in enigmatic and elusive qualities that resound in his sculptural creations. Carrying with them historical remnants and cultural fragments through a continuous process of changes and transformations, these art pieces manifest complicated and distorted appearances. Moreover, the merging of these images represents not only an aesthetic arrangement that is beyond reason, but also a fleeting glimpse of life in movement, as streams of consciousness surge within it.