Flair Magazine I’ve been following Arik Levy’s artistic endeavors for a while now, but I must say, his latest creation, RockGrowth, simply took my breath away!
By Hend Seif El Din
Attractive, reflective, colossal, sculptural, and monumental, RockGrowth was designed by the world-renowned artist and designer in close collaboration with TF. Located in the region of Lyon, France.
TF works with stainless steel tubes and, since 2007, has specialized in the savoir-faire and crafts that use metal as a source of innovation including urban furniture and custom made creations for private and institutional clients, art and design. Bespoke projects and the eternal quest for uniqueness and perpetual design are the driving forces behind this imposing sculpture – RockGrowth – measuring four meters in height and embodying an artistic and technical achievement completed by a team of manufacturers in less than six weeks who strived to respect each stage of the semi-artisan process.
Alongside Arik Levy’s studio, TF has been there for each vital production stage from cutting, shaping and finishing the polished mirror stainless steel forms, to the installation of this great sculpture in the Enclos des Bernardins gardens, located in the district of Boulevard Saint-Germain, designed by ChahanMinassian who has been commissioned by AD Interieurs on the theme of Metamorphosis.
Rockgrowth represents the evolution of the Absent Nature–an on-going project–from biological and yet impossible assumption of planting a “Rock” (mineral) as a seed, thereby taking part in the genetic intimacy of evolution in nature. This natural process interacts with Levy’s own process of thinking, which prompts the need to create his own world of possibilities and projections. When the rock is planted or put on the ground, the mineral acquires, through bio-mimicry, DNA and it germinates. It can then grow and develop in both zones, above ground and underground.
Each and every one of its facets will grow and develop in its own speed and to its own dimensions, creating a faceted tree trunk, parallel to both bulbs of ruts as well as branching points of growth. Each one of these becomes a single rock-growth. When isolating these elements from their context, their appearance returns to that of a mineral composition of an unknown nature, a representation of a unique atom or of an outer space formation. Its reflection creates a geometrically complex, dynamic image, like a still from a movie of an ever-growing mass in fast forward motion.
