Agathe Saint Girons
About
Born in Avignon to a mother from Arles and a father from Marseille, Agathe owes her ardour and fiery temperament to the south of France from where she originates. With a strong presence on the contemporary art scene both in France and internationally, her work has been shown and sold in contemporary jewellery and art galleries throughout the world, from Paris to New York, Sao Paulo, Yokohama, Beyrouth, Oslo and Barcelona. Agathe Saint-Girons opened her first studio in Montreuil on the outskirts of Paris in September 1992. Invited, on a regular basis, to help develop jewellery collections for international firms, Agathe also works with prestigious communications agencies carrying out special commissions for their clients. Having distinguished herself on interior design projects for both private and institutional clients and on dance and theatre installations, Agathe has excelled on needs-based projects by being especially attentive to her clients’ wishes while remaining unwaveringly true to herself.
The Look
Human beings have always been a source of inspiration for Agathe. Every single aspect of the human being is of interest to her, the physical, the mental, the social… Subject or object, observer or observed, fusion or conflict, every point of view opens onto a different scene, a different chapter. Every creation is the result of a special moment, an encounter. Like a story with no ending, it is very much like life itself. Ever since her very first collections, her work has been confirming and complementing the narcissistic and universal, alternatingly micro and macro treatment of a single script, that of relationships – love/hate, words/secrets, compassion/provocation, lightness/depth, commitments/child’s play, where time always figures as the key factor and sets the pace in her work. Agathe Saint-Girons’ works are at times ephemeral, meant to be immediately destroyed like the crystal shell in which she imprisons certain pieces of jewellery or, at other times, anchored in eternity like the rings of her Kalligraphia collection on the subject of the written word. Spending time, wasting time, taking the time and never losing the thread and all in the spirit of love and humour. Her preferred materials are gold and silver which she accents with wood, coral and precious stones and then glass, of course, ever present in her sculptures, coloured, clear or opaque yet always deep and rich. The flamboyant and energetic back and forth between metal, mineral and organic matter testifies to her unrelenting curiosity for all of the elements and inhabitants of our planet. Agathe’s logic of expression oscillates between positive and negative in fine balance between knowledge and that which resembles her. The techniques she uses in working glass and precious metals are traditional, ancestral even, from glass blowing to lamp work, from sawing and hammering to the lost wax process, punctuated here and there by experimental spurts that have marked her life as an artist, very much in the present yet undeniably turned towards the future. A word becomes a jewel, a feeling is expressed as a,shape. Agathe Saint-Girons explores each and every human facet, transforming matter itself by adding vivid colours and essential shapes, in joy and determination.