“We drew a shape which lies between a certain monumentality and a minute presence, flat on the floor.”

Sarah Fauguet and David Cousinard have placed on the floor of the Halle a sculpture with a diameter of 7.20 meters, inspired from the architectural vocabulary of churches and mosques. In the middle of this former industrial space, this rosette works as a carpet, which is at once “solemn and grotesque” thanks to its impressive proportions, geometric patterns and the “triviality of its texture”. For this reason, the artists chose polyurethane foam, a polymorphous material bringing together the “heaviness and flexibility intrinsic to a carpet”. The chemical reaction set off by the foam’s two ingredients allowed it swell in volume until it rubbed up against the sides of a mould, made of various panels of wood. This was then removed, to reveal fine, random traces on the sculpture, coming from the foam’s restricted expansion. Just like this proliferating material, Sarah Fauguet and David Cousinard’s rosette has spilled out across its own borders: through a play of scale, texture and illusion, “it tends towards a landscape and erects the contours of an uncertain field of exploration”.

Sarah Fauguet and David Cousinard were born in 1977 and 1976. They are graduates of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.