Le lion

Vincente Blanchard is originally from Rouen but moved permanently to Mulhouse in 1991, after studying at the Beaux Arts in Paris. The artist is used to creating works for the public space. Several of her works can be found in Alsace, such as in Altkirch. Vincente Blanchard was not at his first work installed in the public space of Mulhouse since we know this artist for La Jonque au Nouveau Bassin which was the first work of the artistic walk

The work presented here during the summer sculpture program is part of a group of works depicting animals. Moreover, all the works follow the same creative process, especially with this assembly of thousands of welded tubes. For the lion, the artist had to make about 24,000 welds. The tubes are galvanized in a zinc bath at 700 degrees. The artist then paints the tubes to get closer to the colours of the images she wishes to draw

This idea of working with tubes came from seeing her daughter playing with magic beads that you place on a plastic plate where you put the beads and then heat them up and it gives shapes that hold together. The artist has reproduced this process but in a disproportionate size

The effect on these works is that the tubes are transparent. If you stand in front of the sculpture, you only see the outline of the sculpture. If the viewer moves, the form comes to life and becomes full. It all depends on the point of view, and each tube becomes like a pixel forming a more or less full and sharp image, coloured or not.