François UZAN

Born in Paris and fond of carving and sculpting at a very young age, François begins his arts education at the Marguerite Allar Academy in Marseille. He then studies at the Mans Arts School, before embarking on a two-year trip around the globe. When he returns to France, he enters the Beaux Arts School in Aix en Provence. He Graduates in 1998 with the Visual Arts Superior National Diploma.

He gets back on the road, travelling to other places such as Latin America, the USA, Australia and a short stay in New Caledonia.In 1991, he settles in Martinique where he teaches carving and sculpting at the Beaux-Arts School. Four years later, he moves to New Caledonia. Although he still teaches, creating takes more and more or his time

Interested in any form of art, he takes part in various street performances with the Les Identiks collective. He experiments and works on staging projects for theatre and circus. He’s also invited to participate in collective and solo exhibitions, in Europe and in the South Pacific region, where some of his work has been acquired by public institutions. Lately, the work he has made in his foundry workshop reminds us that many waves and elements go through us, such as the bells he created for the CHANLIBRE 3.0 exhibition.

( … ) IT IS A GREATER WHOLE THAT DEFINES US ALL ...

Human Matters

All of François UZAN’s work takes us back to the origins of this strange animal that Man is. He looks for what unites us, either in what defeats or transcends us. His sculptures, moving or still, made of feathers or bronze, are poetic, sensitive and sensory

Between the ground and the sky, his work plays with elements, materials, even waves or the air. That air that goes though us and brings us to life is found in anthropomorphic shapes ready to take flight, in creations powered by solar energy or, more recently, in sound waves generated by bells marked with symbols.

We are all at the banquet of humankind, and it is a kind of call for us to stop and look at the bridge between past and future. What are we actually doing with nuclear energy, with the connections between us, with our spirituality or for the environment?

From work to work a very singular and personal form of art takes shape, as the result of a continuous process of research. Mineral and vegetal materials, mobile elements, melted or forged metals, combine in conjoined cosmogony where the compositions bear both fragility and strength. As the artist himself says :

A LONG TIME AGO, I BEGAN RE - SEARCHING MANKIND AND NATU - RAL ELEMENTS. I AM A STORY - TELLER AND MATERIALS ARE MY MEDIUM.

Ecology is at the core of his work now, as it has always been on his mind