Gilles Candelier

Gilles Candelier is a French sculptor born in 1942 in Rodez. He studied applied arts in Paris until 1964 then worked in the atelier Martin-Talboutier and studied with sculpturs Roger Plin, Pierre Brun, Etienne Martin et Jacques Zwobada.

A plural that summarizes the various aspects of Gilles Candelier’s work: light sculptures, unstable equilibrium, original poetry of the fragility of an almost translucent metal, flexible geometry of the human body associated with pure geometry. There is a contemporary creativity in the form and a certain search for timelessness in the content. This sculptural approach is not really the result of a "proactive" effort, but rather of a slow evolution, the evolution of a life, simply, during which several themes and shaping processes have met, thanks to very original techniques that highlight the richness of copper metals: textures, patinas, oxidations. That is how those materials, techniques, themes and how they are treated, support each other to gain strength, poetical value, and become evocative, like “material words”.

"I would like the result of this fifty years work to deserve to be compared to the flow of a source going out of the ground without apparent effort, without violence, but that nothing could shut down because it carries its own origin and route… and me, I have done nothing but prepare its bed”. (Gilles Candelier)