Laurent Le Deunff
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Laurent Le Deunff


2024

Isabella Vitale

 « Les animaux ne sont pas autre chose que les figures de nos vertus et de nos vices, errantes devant nos yeux, les fantômes visibles de nos âmes. » (Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862)

I start with this sentence by Hugo because, during my studio visit to Laurent Le Deunff, I was deeply impressed by the prolific presence of zoomorphic sculptures he created and his fascinating statement: “I never feel alone while working. Ghosts surround me.” Laurent Le Deunff welcomed me into his studio as an excellent host would in his living room, with the naturalness, kindness, and awareness of someone who is at ease and knows they have something valuable and unique to offer: knowledge and time. The same elements permeate his creations, spanning from sculptures to drawings—complementary practices that have always accompanied his artistic exploration and which he uses wisely, distinguishing one from the other. His means and inspiration are diverse but combined by profound consistency, as anything is considered helpful for creating a piece. His sculptures, made from wood, concrete, paper, bone, hair, and teeth, give voice to this vision. He transforms these materials into new entities, providing them with new life and avenues for function and appreciation.
Presuming to clearly understand what meets the eye is not contemplated in Laurent Le Deunff’s practice; here, tactile engagement is essential. I found myself compelled to run my fingers across the surfaces of his rocaille technique concrete sculptures. I was skeptical of my touch and gaze and more inclined to believe in divine intervention capable of transmuting the elements of the artwork. The closer I approached, the more astonished I became by the meticulous concrete craftsmanship, reproducing every detail—fissure, chip, crack, gap, woodworm, or irregularity—that may be in wood or other materials, adding and patiently subtracting matter.
His wooden sculptures, often hewn from a single block, give rise to series like Totem or Cadavres exquis, presenting unexpected combinations that beckon the spectator to see more. His works are inspired by eidetic images, as are the figures of animals carved in ancient times representing mythical creatures, with or without anthropomorphic characteristics, such as winged horses, Etruscan chimeras, Roman wolves, sphinxes, mermaids, centaurs, harpies, etc. In all his sculptures, we can fully perceive the wood quality that, once crafted, turns that figure into an eidolaor simulacra to offer to the gods, just like in ancient Greece. Alternatively, in the Physiologus, a bestiary dating back to the second - third century A.D., there were symbolic descriptions of animals, plants, and stones presented as allegories, with references to the metaphysical sphere. It would seem to be a description of the works created by Laurent Le Dneff. In other words, he could have been the illustrator of the medieval version of Physiologus that was so successfully spread due to the tiny and detailed images contained in it. Thanks to his technical virtuosity and a small amount of healthy madness, he could have reproduced the figures in 3D. Considering some of his exhibitions, including The Mystery of Sculpting Cats (Semiose, Paris, 2021), sculptures representing fantastic characters and objects of surrealist memory populate the show together with portraits of cats meticulously made in pencil, specifically Grelot, the one who saw in Laurent his ideal human companion (and vice versa), endowed with apotropaic powers like all respectable felines.
Often, the exhibitions of Laurent Le Deunff present an immersive intervention in which the space is both scenery and work, as in the case of the surprising My Prehistoric Past (Mrac Occitanie, Sérignan, 2021). The display area was a cave adorned with stalactites, faithfully reproduced by the artist with excellent executive and creative virtuosity that has always drawn his most significant experience and inspiration in the natural world as a scientist-alchemist searching for the philosopher’s stone.
In both his studio and exhibitions, Laurent Le Deunff invites us into his wunderkammer, where naturalia, artificialia, and mirabilia converge, offering a glimpse into a transcendental idealism reminiscent of Kant, disclosing the vision of his works realized “in his imagination and likeness.
    Translation from Italian by Emanuele Carlenzi    Isabella Vitale is a contemporary art historian and independent curator. She trained between Paris and Rome, her hometown, maintaining a bridge between France and Italy through collaborations with both Italian and foreign artists and institutions.

    His dual artistic training, both practical and theoretical, exactly reflects the identity of pianobi: a project dedicated to the promotion of contemporary art that she founded in June 2021, through residencies, workshops, exhibitions, meetings and debates aimed at in-depth and reflection on art. As artistic director of pianobi and curator, in 2022 she was selected by the Institut français Italie and invited to Paris by the Institut français of Paris for the Focus Arts Visuels week.

    In May 2023 she was invited as curator by the French Embassy in Rome to conceive and curate the second outdoor pianobi project: performances created in the halls of Palazzo Farnese by eight Italian and French artists selected by her.

    Before giving life to her project pianobi, she has worked and still works as an independent curator, organizer of events dedicated to contemporary art and writing texts for exhibitions and catalogs on the artists with whom you collaborate.