Nicolas Rubinstein
Quand j’aurai du vent dans mon crâne [When the wind’s blowing through my skull]
4 July – 27 September 2015
As part of the new exhibition in the CAIRN Art Centre, Quand j’aurai du vent dans mon crâne [When the wind’s blowing through my skull], the outreach officers of the art centre propose a free programme for everyone to explore the work of Nicolas Rubinstein.
Guided tours with commentary took place on Monday to Saturday at 15:15 from 15 July until 1 August, then on Tuesdays and Saturdays until 16 August.
Come and share playful creative moments in art workshops to examine the approach of Nicolas Rubinstein, on Fridays from 10:00 to 12:00 in the CAIRN Art Centre (Montée du Parc Saint-Benoît, 04000 Digne). On Fridays 17 & 24 July, the workshops were on the subject of sculpture and, on Fridays 31 & 7 August, they were on drawing (limited to 15 people; children must be accompanied by an adult).
You can now find the flyer on the trail entitled “Tomber sur un os dans le squelette de la montagne” [Finding a bone in the skeleton of the mountain] at the entrance of CAIRN, the Musée Gassendi, the tourist office, or by downloading free of charge from the website at www.musee-gassendi.org.
For all information, see musee-gassendi.org/le-cairn or contact us by telephone at +33 (0)4.92.31.45.29 or by e-mail at musee@musee-gassendi.org.
Nicolas Rubinstein is occupying the new CAIRN Art Centre space for an exhibition of his current works in progress.
Taking the “vertebrate globe” as his starting point, the artist explores two tracks which, linked by cartography, relate respectively to the internal structure of the globe and to the brain as a planet. Staged in the CAIRN space, this coherent series of works presents two intertwining stories.
Through his artistic works, “Nicko” Rubinstein appropriates symbols known by everyone and transforms them into distinctly strong images in order to create reactions and debate. In fact, bone remains have a primordial place in his work. But, for the artist, the bones are devoid of any morbidity and embody the possibility of clarifying a mystery. The bone is the receptacle and the trace of life which carries the memory of the world.
“One of the fundamental aspects of my work is the aim to reveal the hidden structure, the internal framework, the anatomy of beings and of the world, with the intuition – I would even say the conviction – that there is a hidden secret…” (Nicolas Rubinstein)
A shaman artist, Nicolas Rubinstein believes that the creative process can be an intercessor between the world of the ancients, the world of the dead, the world of memory and the world of the living.
Thus he strives to grasp the unknown on the basis of a known world, by always pushing back the boundaries of this internal expedition further and further.
Nicolas Rubinstein was born on 21 April 1964 in Paris. He lives and works in Marseille.
“The book’s title is taken from a poem by Boris Vian, which was put to music by Serge Gainsbourg in 1964 and sung by Serge Reggiani. This interpretation, which I heard one evening on France Inter radio when I was a young student, made a strong impression on me. The words attracted me immediately. They described a familiar image and carried me away me to an inner landscape through which I wandered for a long time. And I felt something happy and cheerful that appealed to me directly. At a time when there were no podcasts or Internet, I wasn’t able to find the song again. For a long time, it remained just a happy memory. During the following year, I started to devour all of Boris Vian’s work. He almost became my role model. He too was an engineer, and also a writer, poet, musician and artist. Today, when I read this poem by him, I am surprised to find many elements of my sculpture in it: the bones, the rats, the brain, the obsession with time, and so on… And, looking back, I wonder if it was the adolescent emotion that I felt on hearing this piece which conditioned my entire work…”
* Nicolas Rubinstein on his latest publication, “Quand j’aurai du vent dans mon crâne” [When the wind’s blowing through my skull] (2014, published by Lienart), relating 25 years of work.
Further information: www.nicolas-rubinstein.com / http://www.documentsdartists.org/artists/rubinstein/
