The Sign and the Skin

Full of merit, yet poetically,

man dwells on this earth.
Friedrich Hölderlin, In Lovely Blue

The Sign and the Skin explores the transcendent dimension which governs territory plannings, looking for a sense of place and its tacit displays in the landscape.

The sign is a map and its scale, a kind of pattern, an esotericism. It has to do with aesthetics of transparency and layers, with the distance from reality – it’s an incantation.

The skin is the human texture populating 3D models made by architects and town planners. It’s the possibility of occupying a place, an imprint – it’s an embodiment.

Today, the identity of an era is no longer personified by Byzantine icons, a gaunt Marylin Monroe or the heroes of Socialist Realism, but soil-less stereotypes, “digitized cut out people” sold 5 dollars each by European or North American images databases. Once reframed and portrayed, these characters first destined to remain anonymous convey the emotional, mythological or instinctive charges of a ritualized nature, which finally initiates the idea of bodies colonized by their own environment.

The Sign and the Skin was made possible with the support of InTRu, a laboratory of the University of Tours, and the Architectural, Urban and Enviromental Council of Touraine.