Steph.Cop - ARO

500 pages
Edited by Steph.Cop
31.5 x 25.5 x 5 cm
Language: French, English
Hardcover 
Edition of 300 copies 
Publisher: Koméla
2018

"Since 2008, Steph Cop has been presenting a body of work related to naturally fallen trees in order to make them becoming the main subject. He sculpts avatars of the spirit which he calls ARO.
Most of the trees he uses are 300 to 400 years old and hold the weight of the past centuries and the history they have gone through. When a tree dies, uprooted, cut, struck down or sick, the wood becomes an artwork by what we do, by what the artist has decided, but also by what people see. The anthropomorphic form of his sculptures is a key for the viewer to recognize himself, attracted by an identifiable and familiar silhouette. In fact, it is the specificities of the matter that strike and permeate the retina. The wood speaks, the flaws and knots bring us back to a personal emotion and make the artwork becoming the one of the witness. There is something that is said by the matter, which tells a story and which is personal to each sculpture and to each one.
The concept of ARO characterizes the perpetual research for both a way of functioning and a form. It is an obsession, an orderly sequence defined by a number of sculptures that succeed one another. Mathematically constructed by the evolution of each series stemming from the previous, ARO is an infinite experience."
Koméla publishing