Abraham Poincheval in a nutshell.
Yesterday, the French Artist has entered his carved limestone where he is going to live for a week.
A peculiar performance
Abraham Poincheval’s solitary artistic journey mainly consists of spiritual and sedentary performances that push the human physical and mental limits in order to discover the world under different perspectives.
Yesterday, the Artist has started a new challenge — spending a week locked into a twelve tonnes limestone rock in which he carved a sitting human silhouette. His little cocoon offers very basic comfort and is only equipped with a toilet, an air vent and storage space for his food and water. During his stay, the artist will feed himself with stewed fruit and puree. The performance piece will be on display all the time at Palais de Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum in Paris.
Poincheval describes his work as an exploration of the concept of time and space and how they can differ for human beings, animals and objects. Therefore, it was crucial to extract the rock not too long before the performance in order to feel the limestone humidity and to experience as many interactions with the mineral as possible.
Poincheval has confessed that his artistic research is very demanding on a psychological level especially when a performance comes to an end. A few days are needed to deal with the strong feelings and emotions involved in leaving a space.
A long list of experimentations of inner journeys
The least we can say it that it isn’t Abraham Poincheval’s first attempt. The French performance artist often locks himself away from the world.
- Living in a giant plastic bottle on the Rhone River in France
- Living for thirteen days inside a stuffed bear
- Living underground for a week
- Living in the sky at 20m from the ground in Rennes for a week
The next step?
Only a few weeks after leaving his rock, the French performer will incubate chicken eggs thanks to his body heat until they hatch. This project doesn’t have a clear deadline as the process may take between 21 to 26 days.
