"The human face has not yet found its face and it is up to the painter to give it ..." Antonin Artaud

Transfiguration's performance is the story of the sculptor's never satisfied desire to give life to his creation. "In a gesture of despair, I immerse myself in clay with my own body, to give life to the work. I sculpt on my head strange masks moving according to my feelings, erasing my identity and becoming a living work of art, between puppet and puppeteer. This blind work forces me to look inside myself in order to reveal the different identities that possess me. Over-modeling, piercing, erasing are required with increasingly thick layers of clay, producing a sort of transition from the "Holy Face" to the "Meat Head". It is a ritual where the hands dance on the face faster than the thought and bring out intimate and deep perceptions. This solo work can evolve in two, the objective remains the same, but something of our relationship to the other then also is as trans-figured. I am flabbergasted to see how normal people think it is to be alive. My whole goal is to account for the very strangeness of being there. The disfigurement in art is for me a means, by the very power of the images that can appear, to reach this awareness ”

First presented in 1998 at Galerie Marie Vitoux (Paris). In 2020, more than 300 performances took place in 25 different countries.

« Sagazan’s transfiguration, has to be one of the most original, incredible things you’re likely to see. » THE GUARDIAN  

Source: Olivier de Sagazan 

More information: olivierdesagazan.com

Olivier de Sagazan was born in Congo in 1959. He studied biology. Teaches for two years then embarks on painting. Work then on the third dimension: sculpture, then finally performance. For the past thirty years these three mediums have been constantly nourishing each other, living arts taking an increasingly important place. He is invited to collaborate with many artists from cinema, fashion or music: Ron Frick for the film Samsara, Bartosz Konopka, Qiu Yang, Gareth Pugh, Nick Knight, FKA Twigs, Mylène Farmer...
In 2020, he created a work with 6 performers: "Ainsi sois moi", then collaborated with Wim Vandekeybus for a creation: "Hands do not touch my precious Me".

Source: Olivier de Sagazan
More information: olivierdesagazan.com