Sculptor Yann Guillon, who is represented by Artistics, was commissioned to give form to Lucia, the ballerina featured in a one-of-a-kind initiative: a multimedia, interactive art project designed to travel to public spaces.
Yann Guillon was entrusted with this unique commission at the start of the year. The mission is both unique and out of the ordinary: create a sculpture of a ballerina to be integrated in a multimedia project that amounts to a monumental music box. The artist devoted himself to this colossal project for six months, ending in downtown Montreal where he oversaw the final assembly and patina work on the piece.
This is far his first sculpture to cross the Atlantic! The tireless explorer of the human figure has won over many contemporary art collectors outside Europe. He is equally gifted at capturing the tension of a body in motion or of a constrained form (his “Grand Esclave” was shown in 2022 at the African American Museum Of Dallas in the exhibit “Yanga: Path to Freedom In The Americas”).
Athletes and dancers are recurrent subjects in his body of work, attesting to his fascination with movement. Or perhaps it’s his fascination with the impossible quest to fix in stone or bronze or some other medium the ineffable energy of life in motion. This commission presented a number of challenges – beyond the temperature extremes of summer in Brittany (Yann Guillon lives and works in the Morbihan region), which added significant complications to his clay modeling work.
Although the artist has previously tackled this topic on a large scale (such as his “Grand Danseur IV“, 2006), creating a resin statue of a ballerina in these dimensions (overall height of nearly 2.4 m), depicting the entire body forced him to approach the project from a totally new perspective. The challenge was no small feat: produce a sculpture that immediately evokes a music box ballerina while also creating the illusion of life and movement.
Lucia ©SNAPePHOTO Inc.
Lucia ©SNAPePHOTO Inc.
Lucia ©SNAPePHOTO Inc.
Lucia ©SNAPePHOTO Inc.
Lucia (that is her name) is the embodiment of the heroine in a fairy tale dreamed up by two members of the Quebecois culture scene: artist Anne Lagacé and Mirari design studio. The story of this ballerina from Ravenna, Italy, is the first work in a collection of enchanted tales gathered under the title “In bocca al lupo”, which is being brought to life in a series of multimedia, interactive art installations conceived to occupy public space.
Lucia is the fusion of several creative forms: music, animated film, sculpture and light-driven art. Thus, this is a collective work comprising the efforts of several artists: Yann Guillon‘s sculpture stands atop a music box made by Michael Jacques and Eric Bernnier of Jackworld. The walls of the music box harbor two screens that show an animated short that illustrate’s Lucia’s story. This short is the work of artist and director Fanie Thuot in collaboration with the Quebec-based publishing house La Pastèque. Finally, the music that scores the story was composed by Maxime Goulet and recorded by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Dina Gilbert.
These various components interact to create an experience that begins anew for spectators whenever they turn the crank on the music box. This gesture is what truly gives life to the installation, as Lucia begins turning on her pedestal and the six lampposts accompany her movements with a light show. The music unfurls through three original compositions, with four levels of modulated intensity: a single crank creates an intimate, changing sound space while the music peaks when the four cranks are operated simultaneously.
What makes the “In bocca al lupo” project unique is the combination of different art forms (sculpture, music, film) to invent a new narrative format that can find an audience outside the walls of cultural institutions.
With its traveling concept, Lucia brings magic and poetry to the heart of cities. She is currently on display on the plaza at the Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal, and will travel to two other cities in Quebec (St-Hyacinthe, Mont-Tremblant) in the coming weeks. To track her journey, visit the website In Bocca al Lupo.
inboccaallupo.art/lucia
