"Woods,
which are the essence of matter in these works by Alain
Rivière, coming mostly from beaches or forests, liminal
places, where the created of nature is waiting to be an aesthetic
experience for the eyes, for the senses of smell and touch. These
sculptures seem to evoke mythological monsters, disturbing surreal
animals, taking phallic or vulvar shapes, or simply surrendering to a
pre-symbolic materiality, living spaces and multi-coloured velvet,
where each nuance is a remembrance of last water or wood, where you can
hear the unexhausted hiss of the wind and the ancient song of the sea.
The work of the artist consisted in an intimate dialogue with its
sculptures, meticulously intervening in fragile wooden texture, without
violating the secret, at the same time enhancing the aesthetic,
commemorative and dreamlike aspects, that they undoubtedly possess. It
seems that this works place the meeting between Zoë and Bios
in a renewed vigour: on the one hand, the matter in the eternal cycle
of destruction and regeneration, from other, the Bios, life as a search
for meaning and for detecting, as questioning look and art."
