Olivier de Sagazan // Transfiguration.

A really disturbing but original, artistic and important performance in my opinion. Pivotal in art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gYBXRwsDjY

Evoking an incredible sense of violence and destruction without actually causing any damage or harm, Sagazan creates an unsettling but incredibly moving body of work  that involves building up layers of clay and paint on his face and body before hacking, cutting, wiping and drenching it in order to achieve disfigurement and transformation.  He uses jerking and contorted movement to exaggerate this sense of animalistic escapism.  This destruction and reinvention of self reveals a primal desire to break away from the physical world with a childlike inventiveness.  This sensitive and detailed yet brutal manifestation describes an exploration of the body and of the senses, free of social constraints or identifiable features of status, culture or convention.  Sagazan has said of his work “I am interested in seeing to what degree people think it’s normal, or even trite to be alive”. 

https://guliverlooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/the-work-of-olivier-de-sagazan/
(Please, watch all the pictures of this link because they are really interesting)

  


"For more than 20 years, Olivier de Sagazan has developed a hybrid practice that integrates painting, photography, sculpture, and performance. Disquieting and deeply moving, his body of work collapses the boundaries between the physical, intellectual, spiritual and animalistic senses."

http://www.veniceperformanceart.org/index.php?page=196&lang=en