Roland Cognet

For several decades now, Roland Cognet has been developing an artistic reflection on materials and forms, with the principal aim of fusing the four fundamental essences of mineral, plant, animal and human into a single work. In this sense, and through his practice of a sculptural art of balance, Roland Cognet is in the tradition of American and French artists close to concrete sculpture, such as Toni Grand, Robert Morris, Michel Fried and Etienne Martin.

Roland Cognet's quest for balance and essence is reflected in his use of raw materials such as wood, steel and bronze, but also in his almost ever-changing use of the space occupied by the work.

For example, in his Bronze series, the artist chooses to occupy space with animal sculptures that can easily be scattered around an exhibition space. With this series, he questions his metaphysical relationship with the animal: "The animal runs through my sculptural work a little like an apparition, a quotation, alongside and in contrast with research built in wood like fragments of simplified landscapes." Roland Cognet sometimes doesn't know where the beginning of a sculpture will take him, the artist allowing himself to be surprised by the otherness of his own creation. His monkey heads bear witness to this: having first adopted the shapes of dog heads, his sculptures have gradually become, under his hands, monkey heads with a blurred gaze. For Roland Cognet, this "blurring of the gaze" is essential, since it signifies and signals the radical otherness of the animal, the irreducible strangeness of wild life.