THE GIFT STONE

 

Each of us is called upon by a stone at some point in our lives. A millennial presence echoing the soul, a mineral mirror of a buried identity, stones sometimes speak to us.

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One day, in the mountains, a spectacular stone truly caught my attention. It was on the hillside, perfectly round. Its diameter was about two meters. Its appearance was identical to that of an old crumpled paper, so much so that on this mountain it was a comical package stranded, a surprise, a message, a question. This stone seemed to float and belong to no geology, no thing, except the mind capable of seeing it. To the eyes, it was a package that seemed to have undergone several odysseys and gave the impression of being extremely thin. Anything seemed possible. What could this gift stone contain? Nothing, of course. Because nothing was obviously more empty than this package.

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That same evening, still captivated, dreams brought me fundamental questions: What is a stone? What is packaging? What is a surprise? What are these concepts brought together in the same object? From the most concrete to the most volatile, these things embrace each other, and "Gift Stone," a nice parenthesis, repeats in my head. I imagine that this is an archaic sculpture. The hope or spiritual will placed on the surface of things.

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Anyone who has seen a stone has stopped at the chance of its shape and its impenetrable irregularity. Anyone who has looked at a stone has encountered, in a cloud, a secret view, conscious or unconscious, of a concrete shape. Sculpture is also this inner search. To think of these sculptors facing the stones that strike them with thousands of small blows. What spectacular perseverance. What will it take to want to express oneself to this extent? Are words so light and all the gestures in the world too insignificant to indulge in the supreme desire?

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And then, there is appearance and truth. From the stone and what it promises to the imagination, possibility, surprise hidden within. For in all finality, in all presence, there is a wonderful drama, an idea held by life that eludes matter. These are the silences of musicians, the stops of sculptors, and the sigh of lovers. There is in every act, in every movement, first an expectation, then an ecstasy, then a fragrance, the life of something that has arrived at the heart of the beings we are. But once born, the stone is immobile, and this noble permanence speaks to us of genesis, a time when consciousness was reserved for the physical.

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This is why the idea of surprise belongs to the stone when it is appreciated in an aesthetic form, in a hermetic membrane. Better yet, if the virgin stone directly inspires the "gift" packaging (for that is what I saw on this high-altitude plot), it brings us back to this question: What is a gift package? Why the packaging? What is there to surprise? Would we know for ourselves and for everyone that the unknown wish graces us? Each would see behind the gift package, the unpronounceable dream. Its missing piece. Stranger still, the gift is often the package and little else than the measure of disappointment. All the magic would be in the package, the buried, the concealed. It's fragile, almost nothing, we guess. And we know this well, receiving this volume of nothing that separates us from things. That atmospheric millimeter that makes everything perception, perhaps fantasy.

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And finally, the knot. But what magic behind this great knot of confusion that holds the compact mystery. This major artifice that suggests the care and attention paid to something precious for someone precious.

 

"The 'Gifted Pebble' is an unalterable promise, a fragile and illusory totality that taught me sculpture in a flash. The full and the empty and the spirit forced to come to a precise point. And then, a major notion, the lightness, because the primary quality of a sculpture is lightness, being idea turned into object. And believe me, this 20-ton rock flew like a crepe paper in space, the miracle was to have seen it there immobile.

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I never found that stone again on that field between Sierre and Cran Montana. So I searched for it in all my travels, I went down into quarries and somewhere south of Liège, a stone stopped me. A Blue Stone, enormous. It was given to me like an undisciplined animal, on my birthday, it was my stone.

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The Gifted Pebble became a companion. It invites me into the very particular circle of stone enthusiasts, where there remains an even more particular secret: stones domesticate us, besiege us with their weight. Man always wants dynamic things, an immutable object is a joy that is remarkably faithful. The universe revolves around this precise mass, light, seasons, water and air. This sleeping star makes me pray.

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I want to add a humble ribbon with a small spiral in gilded bronze, and take it to the top of a mountain. We'll see if it's possible, for Sisyphus, for the projection, for the perpetual and obstinate quest for a state of grace. The surprise will be the flight."