Jephan De Villiers
Holder of numerous prizes including that of the Institut de France, Jephan de Villiers is a seren artist born in Le Chesnay, near Versailles, he lived and worked in London then in Brussels and since 2000, in Charente Maritime, not far from Bordeaux. He loves nature and trees perhaps because it is a chestnut tree who became his friend during his long illness when he was a child... "from my room where I was bedridden, I saw a chestnut tree rising majestic. This tree was my companion day and night. It took me outside the walls... "an avant-garde ecologist". He takes us with his creatures outside of our daily lives towards "an imaginary civilization that seems to be from a past where men and nature were one. Each of his sculptures is a poignant testimony to the lost harmony of man and nature. They all come from a gleaning - during long daily walks - of fragments of nature, roots twigs, wood bank, feathers, bugs, earth and mud... and their transformation into small "reappeared" creatures... Jephan de Villiers likes to say : " I didn't invent anything. I remembered". Many exhibitions are devoted to Jephan de Villiers. His sculptures are present in open public places, in museums ans in many private collections. "Fragments of memory" have been deposited around the world.