2019
Project to give sight to statues around the world
I consider that objects deserve, at the very least, to be endowed with a soul, because after all, they are made of the same elementary particles as living beings. Breathing a phygital soul is my daily work, an approach aimed at sketching another universe; an alternate universe is at hand. I aspired to grant vision to the statues through a refined process, consisting of capturing precisely what the statues observe, thanks to a device that I designed. Neo Valen
In the firmament of contemporary creation, the artist Neo Valen weaves a unique trajectory, that of an awakener of stone souls. His project, ambitious and poetic, is deployed on the international scene, aspiring to restore sight to statues, these eternal sentinels of human history. Through an approach imbued with delicacy and depth, Valen aims to give a soul to the statues through the prism of vision, establishing an unprecedented dialogue between the sculptural and the perceptual.
The method used by Neo Valen is apparently simple but reveals, on closer inspection, a sophistication and poetry that questions. He explores the world through the eyes of these stone figures, capturing through the lens of a camera he himself designed, the silent but expressive vision of the statues. Each photograph is not simply a reflection of the present, but a quest, an attempt to perceive the soul infused into inanimate matter.
By offering sight to the statues, Valen gives them a phygital soul, establishing a bridge between the tangible and the intangible, between the ephemeral and the eternal. In this approach there is an exploration of the transcendent, a reverence towards the capacity of matter to embrace and reflect the complexity of reality. The statues, in their stillness, become the silent but eloquent witnesses of our times, their newly acquired gaze creating an echo across time and space.
This quest of Neo Valen is not simply an artistic act, but an act of faith in the capacity of art to reveal the soul of the material world. By recreating the view, he not only shows a different perspective, but reveals a soul that, through the gaze of the statues, contemplates the world with eternal serenity. It thus invites reflection on the nature of perception, on the interaction between the visible and the invisible, and on the capacity of art to awaken consciousness, to transcend the material to touch the essential.
Neo Valen‘s approach resonates like a meditation on the notion of soul, on the capacity of matter to capture and reflect fragments of the universe. It is an invitation to look beyond the surface, to see the soul that resides in the material, and to appreciate the beauty and poetry that emanate from the convergence between stone and perception. In an often rushed world, Neo Valen‘s work is a poignant reminder of the depth of visual experience, an ode to contemplation and renewed wonder at the complexity and beauty of the world around us.