Intention
My work focuses on the representation of animals. Seeing animals elicits images, memories, feelings, and associations in intense ways. Our close and contradictory relationship with animals goes back the origins of mankind. This is because Early Stone Age humans lived in a world inhabited and shaped by animals. They constituted not only a source of food, but also a competitor for nutrition and a threat.
I began to delve deeper into this topic as I was dealing with archaic animal representations. Thus, I made the relationship between humans and animals at the time of the origins of mankind the central topic of my work. I deeply admire our prehistoric artists who managed to capture the inner nature of animals with just a few lines.
For me, a central theme when representing animals is capturing an internal motion, a dynamic snapshot. My work consciously strives to build a mental connection with archaic forms of presentation. I want to transport the viewer back to the time of the first human being who — from his inner drive — was able to create impressive works of art. I want my animal sculptures to appeal to the viewer on an emotional, instinctive level and build a bridge to the unconscious that has kept the roots to our origins. We are one in this hidden world.
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Speech by Bernard David on the occasion of the exhibition at the Centre de la Céramique Contemporaine La Borne
Walking to the Ule Ewelt exhibition, I remember walking in a narrow stone corridor, in the Niaux cave in Ariège, where we can still see the original drawings of prehistoric men. With the majesty of the forest as a backdrop, these animals installed high up, as if on the stone walls, we feel the omnipresence of nature embracing us with its vital force.
Tonight, we are in the crucible of our origins. The bellies of animals palpitate in unison with our breathing. We are on the threshold of primitive, instinctive emotion, where our life is on the alert, to stay alive. Here the animals are neither kind nor aggressive, just in their vital impulse.
With an almost wild, archaic gesture, Ule Ewelt models animals from before domestication. She expresses all their quintessence. Our cellular memory is awakened, as well as our imagination where memory, feeling, intense projection on animals are mixed. Before our appearance, they were already present. Source of food, food competitors, threat to our survival, we are always, intimately linked to them.
Since the dawn of time, all mythologies represent them.
The heart of Ule's work comes from the study of the representations of the parietal art of the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet. This deepening of the relationship Man - Animal, she places it at the source of humanity. It is obvious, in front of what we see, that she admires these artists of prehistory, who simply, in a few strokes of ochre and charcoal, captured the essence of life of these animals. And you too, in the forms and their treatment, you capture this momentum, this "vibe of life" dear to the Poet Kenneth White. In this exhibition, our perception is neither intellectual nor conceptual. It lodges deep in the guts, at the core of the visceral. We are almost in the rustic comfort of a cave. We can imagine the flames of a herbal fire, illuminating animal causes on the stone screen. This vital face, this dynamic face makes all our technological and mental sophistication waver. What do we hear? The rustling of breath, the banal, marvelous trembling of animal breathing, therefore of ours. Bison, mammoth, bear, ibex, rhinoceros, our life parallels, listening to the quivering handle of the grass, to a cracking of dry wood, bristling the ears.
We perceive the tiniest worry, to the handle displacement in the visual or olfactory space; we even perceive the movement of clouds and seasons. The earth, this fabulous material perfectly translates what you want to convey. The earth breathes in unison with these beasts. This semblance of lack of control, of randomness, of not being finished well can be surprising. But precisely, this addition of imperfection allows us to access this elusive living, makes us feel this thrill of existing, experience the bite of winter, the intolerable heat, the lack of food or the satisfaction after hunting. In this contemporary exhibition cave open to the forest majesty, we waver, not in front of death that can arise with a stroke of a claw, of a horn; we waver in front of what is most precious, this vital impulse, the breath of life.
Ule Ewelt reveals this invisible essential. When in art we perceive this essence, this fuel of existence, what a marvel.
So thank you for sharing this with us and for accepting our invitation.
Bernard David April 2019
“Ule Ewelt tells a story, a movement, a moment; in her sculptures, the protagonist is not the anatomy but the soul, that of the bison, the mammoth, the lioness. Ule Ewelt’s work goes beyond the figurative, it goes where the feelings and the
profound nature of the animals, represented in all their diversity, are born.”
- Sara Scardigli