The Obliques invite us to question the meaning of the words we use. We find ourselves at a loss to define what we see, struggling to connect visual experience with the semantic networks of our minds. When we surrender to words too broadly defined—like the all-encompassing "sculpture"—we are prevented from confronting the question of how reality becomes itemized into discrete words and approximative concepts, and we diminish our human experience.

The Obliques explore the borders between vertical and horizontal, flat and dimensional, ordered and chaotic. They propose intermediary states and query our impulse to structure and organize.

The Obliques are connected, each transitioning from the final angle cut of one rod to its first assembly with the next. This butterfly effect is invisible, yet its influence ripples across the entire assembly, resulting in an unpredictable shape that emerges gradually—inevitably shaped more and more by the evolving structure as a whole.

This continuous process is occasionally suspended at the separation points between Obliques. These pauses fix the current shape in space and time, then carry forward, moments later, the influence of the last cut into the next piece. They challenge our notion of the boundary between process and object, the latter being merely a temporary manifestation of the former. Taken together, the Obliques form a single, non-dual reality: an event-object emerging and, over a longer arc of time, vanishing again.

— Nicolas de Cordes

Verticals

All Verticals are unique and hand made with care and precision

At about 50gr each, they are composed of rods of copper and tin, assembled with a welding torch. Some of the Verticals are finished with a sheet of thin japanese paper

Gravity
A fragile shape floats in an improbable equilibrium. It gently wakes us up to observe it and wonder.
It invites us to be humanly aware again, and sense the gravitational field in which we bathe

Time
Sometimes it moves. Sometimes it doesn’t. Or it looks like it, from where we stand
One day the shape will break. It is fragile. It will take just an instant in the long journey that these billions of years old atoms of copper and tin are experiencing, on their slow way back to pure space

Relations
Its hesitating movements follow the random whims of turbulences of the air that react to our presence and our breath. Our body heat at a distance or the sounds we do, make it vibrate very slightly, reflect our light in geometries on the walls, and unperceptively dilate its rods.
It’s mass, as light as it is, draws us closer together

The Research Framework of Vertical for a while explores the relationship between human and the physical world we are in, at scale not normally perceived by our senses

Artistic manifestation through Verticals have both a material and metaphorical role.

Material because Verticals are material objects located here and now in front of us. They are like scientific instruments to probe the actual physical interactions that happens at sub-perceptible scales such as dilatation due to micro temperature variations, or tensions due to gravitational effects of our bodies on surrounding objects.

Metaphorical, because Verticals are Art pieces and take shape in our mental time and attention space. They trigger the subjective interpretation of reality each one of us make when transforming our senses experiences into art experiences through an explicit act of consciousness and subjective interpretation. Poetic emotion, surprise, criticism, wonder, denegation… increase the transformative power of our experience. By involving our emotions it leads us closer to Knowledge at an intimate level.

Verticals help us get out of our somnolent routines, and reclaim our role as “Mindful Observers”

Verticals and Time
The new optical clock based on the Th-229 nuclear transition developed by the www.nuclock.eu European Program, is so precise that it will be significantly impacted by gravity. To such an extent that the notion of time loses its meaning: a displacement of less than a millimeter of the altitude of the clock will change its last decimals. So time observed by this clock will be different at every point on earth.
Therefore on a Vertical, time “runs” at different speed at its bottom and its top, and a Vertical developed in the artist workshop will experience a different time zone when installed somewhere else. When an observer gets closer to a Vertical it will bend time through its moving mass, deforming time and space in which the Vertical floats. Reciprocally the Vertical will modify the space-time of the observer, and for instance will be affecting the different time zone of the parts of the brains that perceive it.

Verticals are Information
At the junction of Art and Science is the transformative power of Information. If our Sense doesn’t register subtle impacts (micro and below…), the information we receive when reading about Verticals and trusting the science that its refers to, has the potential to generate macro effects several order of magnitude bigger than the impact it talk about: displacement of our bodies to observe, discussions with fellow observers, change in our brains networks to register and remember the experience. Information enthropy is lurking in the background

Verticals and temperature
Verticals are made by welding with a burning flame, but also evoke cold as they use white or black Japanese paper called Washi.
Washi is produced by hand in a way similar to that of ordinary paper and are traditionally the winter work of farmers. It involves a long and intricate process that is often undertaken in the cold weather of winter, also as pure, cold running water is essential to the production of washi. Cold inhibits bacteria, preventing the decomposition of the fibres. Cold also makes the fibres contract, producing a crisp feel to the paper and tiny wrinkles that are traces of the handcrafted making of the Verticals.

Commissions, acquisitions, studio visits.

Availability depends on production, each item is unique, please get in touch. For the reasons above, there is a minimum of 2 when acquiring Obliques.