
Louis-Cyprien RIALS

Apart from photographic projects - contemplative or conceptual - installations and videos, mixing documentary and fiction, my research has been oriented since 2006 on the particular subject of minerals and more specifically on image stones. In the first century, Pliny the Elder wrote that "not having marbles ready to use them for walls or to divide them into pieces, one decided to imitate them with paint, reproducing the stains of the rarest stones" (Pliny the Elder, 1981, book XXXVI, p. 53.). Contemporary technology has allowed me, through different approaches, to satisfy this ancient desire to plunge completely into the paréidolies usually hidden in the depths of the rock. By revealing it through large prints or wallpapers of varying sizes, the stone evokes to the spectator the possibility of a landscape defined by the cut, and that only he will be able to read and interpret, unless he is guided by a title revealing a more restrictive reading key (cf: La théorie de la Terre Creuse - 2014). This path, supported by readings and visits to quarries and museums, has offered me a general and documented vision of picture stones. From the sandy concretions that form the American Kanab stone, to the Japanese suiseki sculpted by water and the two-coloured dunites. From the Chinese stones of Guohua de Jiegou, or Youlan to the bluish marbles of Bristol. At the same time, I went on a trip and photographed the most beautiful rock formations I had previously spotted: the Ciudad Encantada in Spain, Externsteine in Germany, Đavolja Varoš in Serbia, the giant mushrooms of Beli-Plast in Bulgaria and the Turkish region of Cappadocia and further still, the salt lakes of Kurdistan. These photos, like others, are waiting for a favourable opportunity to be unveiled or matched with future work. »Louis-Cyprien Rials