« The Owl », Exposition Magie et Sortilèges
« The Owl », Exposition Magie et Sortilèges
Atelier d'Arts de la Butte aux Cailles – Profils et Reliefs
September 14–15, 2024
A cubist ceramic owl emerges as guardian and talisman in this Paris exhibition exploring magic and transformation.
In the intimate setting of the Atelier d'Arts de la Butte aux Cailles, the exhibition Magie et Sortilèges brought together works that navigate the threshold between material form and symbolic resonance. Arnaud Quercy's contribution, The Owl – Archimedes, stood as a meditation on wisdom, watchfulness, and the sculptural possibilities of myth. This ceramic work, finished with a bronze patina that suggests centuries of contemplation, reimagines the owl not through naturalistic representation but through a cubist synthesis of planes and voids that captures the essence of alert stillness.
The Butte aux Cailles quarter, with its village atmosphere preserved within the urban fabric of the 13th arrondissement, provided an appropriately enchanted setting for an exhibition exploring magic and spellwork. The atelier's focus on profiles and reliefs—Profils et Reliefs—aligned naturally with Quercy's sculptural approach, where form emerges from the interplay of positive mass and negative space, where a circular aperture becomes an eye that sees without revealing what it knows.
Archimedes draws its title from a double lineage: the Greek mathematician whose geometric insights still structure our understanding of form, and the wise, sardonic owl from Disney's The Sword in the Stone, that animated guardian of young Arthur's education. In both references, the owl embodies knowledge that observes and waits, that measures before speaking—if it speaks at all. Quercy's sculpture translates these associations into ceramic weight and patinated surface, into curvilinear planes that fold into one another like thoughts not yet articulated.
The work's modest scale—28 centimeters in height—invites the close attention that its subject demands. Visitors encountered a form that rewards sustained looking: yellow-green tones washing across smooth surfaces, darker passages anchoring the base, crystalline formations in the glaze catching light like fragments of ancient knowledge surfacing through bronze. In the context of Magie et Sortilèges, the owl functioned as both artwork and talisman, a guardian presence overseeing an exhibition dedicated to the mysterious and the transformative.
Artist Statement
The owl has always occupied a particular space in human imagination—perched at the boundary between day and night, between the seen and the sensed. In creating Archimedes, I wanted to honor that threshold position through form itself. The sculpture doesn't attempt to replicate an owl; it attempts to embody the quality of owl-ness, that patient alertness that ancient cultures associated with wisdom and that still resonates in our symbolic vocabulary.
The bronze patina was essential to this intention. I wanted the surface to suggest accumulated time, as though this form had been watching and waiting long before we arrived to look at it. The circular void near the top functions as an eye, but also as an opening—a space where interior and exterior meet, where what is known and what remains mysterious coexist. In the context of Magie et Sortilèges, this seemed fitting: magic, after all, operates precisely in such liminal spaces.
Logistics
The exhibition Magie et Sortilèges took place September 14–15, 2024, at the Atelier d'Arts de la Butte aux Cailles – Profils et Reliefs in the Butte aux Cailles quarter of the 13th arrondissement, Paris. Hours were Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00. Admission was free. The venue is accessible via Métro Place d'Italie (Lines 5, 6, 7) or Corvisart (Line 6), followed by a short walk into the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood. For inquiries, visit
arnaudquercy.art.
