Astraea

Astraea, in memory of a galleon of the East India Company that was shipwrecked in another century.

Imagine that its prestigious and perhaps mythical cargo of porcelain, forever removed from all human desires, reborns deep inside the sea.

Imagine that at the end of an indefinite time, has developed between all these precious pieces delivered to themselves, an original civilization of shapes and colors.

More than 10,000 miniatures, patiently throwned one by one by Grégoire Scalabre, are glazed in several shades of green chosen from the palette of Sèvres, from Empire to Absinthe, to white. Thus collected in density, in concretions, these miniatures are assimilated to a marine inflorescence, as they are all different, like living beings.

Structurally, Astraea can be described as “interactive” because its pieces of porcelain, magnetized on the metal vortex, can be repositioned indefinitely.

Would this accumulation now be a protective coat covering an incredible wreck?

Would it has taken over a post-industrial object lost in hostile marine territory, or a crystallized helix wake for an underwater eternity?

The cargo seems, in any case, to have become the ship itself.

These delightfulforms, produced by man for his appeasement, are miraculously rescued, not only from the depths, but also from the time, as if their multitude and concentration had given them the ultimate power, albeit mineral, in a new organization.