Photo-plasticien autodidacte indépendant. Alexandre Saint-Loup (né Alexandre Woelffel)
Fr.
J’observe et j’explore chaque jour les états émotionnels humains, qui ne résident pas dans un esthétisme pur, mais dans une identité assumée qui s’impose aux yeux du spectateur, une diversité d’individus pour autant de manière de voir, ressentir, & exister.
Autodidacte, je me nourris de mes recherches, à mi chemin entre technique traditionnelle & expérimentale, je mélange et façonne un univers atypique à chacun de mes modèles selon mon instinct, les compositions apparaissent alors comme la fusion quasi-organique pour créer et non simplement additionner.
Matières incrustées et superposées, j’ essaie d’accentuer et exacerber la vulnérabilité de ces corps et faire ressortir toute leur singularité, toute leur fragilité qui me permet de faire naître un sentiment, une histoire du corps et de sa personnalité qui dévoile un vécu, un souvenir, une sensation.
Peu de mes travaux offrent une vision claire du visage, cette absence leur donne une autre dimension, dénués de toutes identifications, présentés sans titre, ces personnages arrivent pourtant, par les sentiments dont ils sont à la fois porteurs et générateurs, à obtenir une identité du fait de leur simple présence. Il me plaît à croire que mes personnages amènent à une réflexion profonde sur les états d’âme et de corps et les différences entre toutes les individualités.
Mon travail est un moyen de mettre à nu toute la brutalité à laquelle les individus sont soumis et/ou se soumettent pour la quête d’une image artificielle et erronée de la normalité et de la beauté.
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Artist & photographer, Alexandre Saint-Loup (also known as Alexandre Woelffel)
Eng.
I don’t consider my creation as a simple production, but as a Birth. A birth of polymorphous beings which may sometimes be miscreated and who arouse compassion, fear or embarrassment and even all of theses feelings at the same time. A Birth of characters who are close to me, a birth of characters who follow me from their very first time of their existence.
Such birth complete not a reflection, but a gestational period leaded by my own imagination who, sometimes, guide me without guiding me, helps me without explaining how nor when I will finally be able to meet “my” character who, step by step, reveals his identity to me. That’s why, quite often, I give up my pictures to both Time and my Imagination, allowing them to shape, evolve and modify my characters. If Time and Imagination framed this gestational period, the conception of my characters are always based on a picture from a model who is chosen by me, trusting my own instincts, and my envy.
A female model who, by the way, is no more a simple iconic vision but an organic matrix, a vital basis able to create a new being. And onto this very peculiar matrix, I will affix my tools which are at my disposal : pictures, paints, draws etc., in order to melt, alter, create a very special universe linked to the picture chosen at the very beginning of my artistic process. Conception shall not be seen as a simple addition of elements but must instead be considering a unique rendezvous, a mostly organic fusion who can create. All along this gestation, through incrusted, superimposed elements, I try to keep a kind of permanent weakness which can’t be dissociated from my work in order to highlight the vulnerability of my characters and make all their beauty naked-eyed to everyone.
This beauty, this so fragile beauty, allow me to generate alternatively positive and negatives feelings, giving the “a little something”, a spark who invite us to discover a real-life experience, a memory, a story told by the nature and intimately wondering us about our own identity, our origin, our own existence. Indeed, all my pictures can’t give any opportunity to offer a clear vision of the character’s face, This absence endowed my character with a mysterious Aura.
Who are they? Am I sure that he is a stranger to me? Without their face, showing without any tittle nor explanation and deprived of any identifications, my characters surprisingly succeed, by the feeling they both endowed and generate, to obtain an identity by their sole existence. I like to think that my “characters” can lead people to asking themselves about Women fears, complexes and acceptance about their body. My “characters” are the mirrors of their questioning, fantasies and phobia. They are the revelation of both their weakness and their strength.
My work is a way to reveal in a crude way how women are submitted or accept to be submitted to a brutal and cruel diktat. A diktat who promise them to offer as a reward perfection and beauty. A reward which is finally no more than a useless illusion, an artificial hope, and a corrupted definition of the true Beauty. Through these pains, I explore both psychic and physical sufferings who constantly exhaust Women.
My characters are the vessels of a principle which claims that even something considering as ugly and horrifying can contain Beauty within it. A principle who consider that the roots of the true Beauty doesn’t reside into aestheticism but into an identity clearly assumed, an identity which imposes itself to spectators.