Fragments

« I have a vision of an apocalypse before my eyes : the earth has been ravaged, smashed to pieces, and from these pieces I see the random emergence- like the debris of some shipwreck – of the tree remnants, of walls, of horses, of bags, of cans, of weapons, of uniform scraps, and strips of flesh. It is a chaos that is constantly being reshaped by the never-ending bombing. »

Henry Bordeaux, « La bataille devant Souville » (La Renaissance du Livre, Paris, 1920)

Originally from the North of France, François Lelong now lives in the Limousin region.The childhood he spent in the Artois region, on the old battlefields of World War I, was the foundation of the interests that feed his approach as a visual artist today : namely, natural history and archeology. These territories are not just wide natural areas ; their land riddled with explosives is still impregnated with fragments of war, and the flint of bief ⁽¹⁾ bears testimony to the prehistorical occupation of the hills ⁽²⁾. Bullets are found lying next to arrow heads. The « Fragments » project, rooted in this « Land of metal and bones » ⁽³⁾, finds itself at the intersection of History and personal history, and offers archeological poetics that attempt to gather what was scattered and recompose what was fragmented. Metallic rubble, waste and fragments of ammunition collected on site, picked up on the laboured land, are all components of his sculptures and installations.

(1) Geological word referring to a soil rich in flint.

(2) François Lelong has contributed to the local archeological inventory by publishing the description of a neolithic site located on the hill of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (Pas-de-Calais), in the vicinity of the biggest French military necropolis of World War I : « A protohistoric settlement on the Lorette Hill » Gauheria review #45, 2000

(3) Land von schroot en knoken, John Desreumaux (Davidsfonds, Leuven, Belgique, 2011)