| «“In her hands, concrete signs, using the most sophisticated scientific techniques, she is able to infuse poetry inside this basic unwelcoming material... Milène Guermont is a wonderful artist who successfully combines Art and Science... This is the raw material of a new civilization we have entered in”. Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr, President of the Palais de Tokyo, Contemporary Arts Center in Paris “Since a few decades ago, to be more precise, since 1972, we have abandoned the Moon. Who does not dream about a “SECOND MOON”, about a second time on the Moon? It is a wonderful experience to be an astronaut. It is also a cruel one: because an astronaut’s memory is a man’s memory, and this experience is so extra-ordinary that it is in fact out-of-reach of our memory. What we can retain from these beyond-belief moments is, alas, so thin as compared to the feeling we have sensed. When touching Milene’s work, made from an innovative concrete, we can nearly acces directly to what the Apollo astronauts must have felt when they stepped on the Moon. Some of them told me what it was like, with passion, this sensation of plenitude which took over their body. Focusing my mind on my most beautiful spatial emotions, I could trace, for couple of seconds, a vanishing memory: bleu and fragile vision of our planet, sailing through the infinitely obscure, eternal, darkness of the universe. I send here a vibrant “Thank you” to Milene. She tries to revive through Art and Sciences intimately mixed up what Humans may sometimes uncover in this world, what is the most beautiful in it, just at our hand, or so much further away...” Patrick Baudry, Astronaut |
“A speck of dream in a virtual world… Since their creation, virtual worlds have progressively integrated more and more complex elements. With “SECOND MOON”, Milène Guermont adds in Second Life a planet born from imagination, a dream in this world which comes true in a virtual world. In return, square feet, these pieces of Second Moon, these fragments of, dream come true in this world. Milène’s work is a superb reflection on the virtual/real relationship, which has become so tight in our lives and activities that is often difficult to distinguish them from each other. Which project, nowadays, as concrete as can be, is not firstly conceived, thought and realized in a completely virtual way ? And what about all these images, in this time when imaging takes such a crucial place in Sciences, which are images only by their name, but are modified, interpreted, encoded in thousand different ways, and which, however, represent ? And beyond this reflection, what an inexpressible emotion to caress a fragment of dream… And how powerful to arouse such an emotion by mixing these universes… Thanks Milène”. Bruno Robert, Research Director of Atomic Center |