Max Charvolen

At the heart of the rehabilitation project of the disused wine cooperative, the artist took the imprint of a staircase slated for demolition. The resulting work, a monumental diptych, dœs not reconstruct the staircase but preserves its memory in a kind of “flattened mold,” simultaneously a trace and a reinterpretation. The work dœs not simply commemorate; it activates the memory of the place, making it tangible and perceptible. A dialogue is established with the architecture, questioning the notion of heritage not as a fixed object, but as a living process, in perpetual motion.

Born in 1946, Max Charvolen lives and works in Cannes. A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts and Architecture in Marseille and having completed an internship with Oscar Niemeyer in Rio de Janeiro, he has been developing a body of work at the crossroads of painting and architecture since the late 1960s. A member of the INterVENTION group and co-founder of Groupe 70, his work deconstructs the traditional mechanisms of painting by intervening on the support and transposing real space onto the pictorial surface. He has exhibited regularly in France and internationally since the 1970s.