Physics and biology books derived from the archive of the French National Center of Scientific Research.
81x54 cm - 31,5x21 in
Métamorphique
Drawing from discarded Physics and Biology books in the CNRS archives, the “Métamorphique” series explores the concept of recycling in the age of digitalization through the lens of material transformation. The term “metamorphic” is borrowed from geology, where rocks undergo profound structural changes under pressure and heat without melting.
This project examines the implications of paper’s obsolescence as an information medium, questioning what becomes of knowledge when its physical support is deemed expendable. As scientific archives are digitized and their paper originals discarded, these books, once vessels of discovery and learning, enter a liminal state between waste and potential. The work delves into new dimensions of reading, where the materiality of the page supersedes its textual content, and the act of folding becomes a form of reinterpretation, obsolescence becomes resurrection, and the end of one life cycle marks the beginning of another.
This metamorphic process operates as a form of mnémoplastie, sculpting memory itself. The folded books become palimpsests where scientific knowledge, rather than disappearing, undergoes a mnemonic transformation. Each fold consolidates what the book remembers of its former purpose, creating stratified traces that resist complete erasure. What appears as material obsolescence reveals itself as hypermnesia: the discarded archive remembering more intensely through its physical transformation than it ever did as a consulted text.
Physics and biology books derived from the archive of the French National Center of Scientific Research.
80x80 cm - 31,5x31,5 in
Physics and biology books derived from the archive of the French National Center of Scientific Research.
50x50 cm - 20x20 in
Physics and biology books derived from the archive of the French National Center of Scientific Research.
52x32 cm - 20,5x12,5 in
Chronotopique
The “Chronotopique” series explores the intersection of space and time through the transformation of matter. The term “chronotopic” refers to the merging of temporal and spatial dimensions, a concept borrowed from the theory of relativity, where geographical maps become receptacles of memory, their folds recording both the journeys undertaken and the passage of time itself.
Each fold becomes a chronotope: a point of convergence where distance traveled and time lived condense into a single point. The maps, marked by repeated folds, bear the traces of countless itineraries, transforming cartographic space into a medium for lived experiences that carry information and allude to the theory of quantum memory.
The work explores how memory is sedimented in matter, how space bends under the weight of time, and how this act of bending becomes a meditation on relativity.
Discordantique
Born from a period of personal upheaval, the “Discordantique“ series explores the concepts of destruction and reconstruction through the geological phenomenon of unconformity, the meeting of rock layers of vastly different ages and origins, separated by erosion, time, and tectonic forces. The term “unconformity” refers to the surface that separates two sequences of strata with distinct histories, a break in geological continuity that, paradoxically, creates new formations by linking disparate temporal fragments.
This series emerged from the deconstruction of unsatisfactory, failed works born of a chaotic period. The canvas shattered, its fragments scattered like tectonic plates after a rupture. Later, some pieces were distorted, others reassembled into two new compositions, creating an assemblage of memory and matter. To these remnants were added pages from the Korean Jikji, a Buddhist text and the first printed book in history (1377), as if to suture the wound, in the spirit of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold, where the repair celebrates the fracture rather than erasing it.
The work does not conceal its history of fragmentation, but rather celebrates it, making visible the discordances, the ruptures, the missing intervals, the abrupt transitions between incompatible times. What emerges is neither the restoration of the original nor its complete erasure, but a third state: a discordant stratigraphy where personal trauma and historical memory, destruction and repair, past and present converge on the same surface. In these discordances lies not weakness, but resilience: the capacity to hold together contradictory temporalities, to bring forth beauty from discontinuity, to transform the violence of rupture into new creation.
Orogenèse
Book pages and maps - ink
Discordance - 지질학적 부정합
Korean Hanji paper (mulberry leaves) and pages from Jikji - 직지 (Buddhist teaching book), first book printed in metal characters in history.
81x54 cm - 31,5x21 in
Noyau - 핵심
Pages from Jikji - 직지 (Buddhist teaching book), first book printed in metal characters in history.
80x80 cm
Trou noir - coupe
Physics and biology books derived from the archive of the French National Center of Scientific Research.
50x50 cm
Régénératique
The “Régénératique” series explores cycles of regeneration through land art interventions that symbolically reintegrate paper into the organic world from which it originates. The term “regenerative” refers to processes that not only avoid harm but actively restore ecosystems, going beyond mere sustainability to create a positive ecological impact.
Replanter les livres, Jeter l'encre, Retrouver la mémoire, created for the Lieurac Land Art Festival in Ariège, symbolically reintegrates books into the soil from which their paper came. “Fugue de papier”, musical scores folded and then glued onto beech tree trunks in Finieyrols, in the Aubrac region, creates ephemeral notations on the bark.
These interventions are then removed because the ink and glue are not biodegradable, and they only have a symbolic and ephemeral value, highlighting the problem of the materials complexity making it impossible to biodegrade all of its objects, even the simplest ones.
Replanter les livres
Jeter l'encre
Retrouver la mémoire
Books found in a book box on the path
Lieurac Land art festival - Ariège
Fugue de papier
Musical score of a fugue on a beech tree trunk
Finieyrols - Aubrac
Pages from Geology book on slate
Finieyrols - Aubrac
Branches
Pages from History book on wood
Finieyrols - Aubrac
After studying history, geography and art at Université Paris Cité, and earning a degree in graphic design from École Estienne Paris, Erwan Soyer has been developing an artistic practice since 2010 that explores the mechanisms of memory and forgetting. His work draws inspiration from surrealist poetry, geological processes, theoretical physics, neurosciences and psychological concepts.
Working primarily with books and archives destined for destruction, including archives discarted after digitization, or simply salvaged book pages, his practice explores the material obsolescence of paper as a metaphor for the psychological processes of erasure and persistence. His work examines what exists on the margins: materials that have exhausted their primary function but retain a latent potential, like repressed memories harboring dormant meaning within the psyche.
Developing a paper-folding technique inspired by Baroque art and geomorphology, and working with materials in a raw and organic way, his approach can be described as Mnemoplasty (from the Greek mnêmê, memory + plastos, molded), sculpting memory as an artistic material. His work considers paper, the medium of information, as an analogy for brain neuroplasticity. Folding, erasing, inked, reflect how memory is neither fixed nor lost, but perpetually reshapeable. His work draws on scientific processes: metamorphic transformation, chronotopic fusion, geological discordance, stochastic perturbation, psychological anamnesis... considered as resources structuring both the visual appearance and the mental experience of the pieces.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including a commission for the private collection of the Alpina Hotel in Gstaad, Switzerland, alongside works by Gerhard Richter, Antoni Tàpies, Louise Nevelson, Tracey Emin, Henri Matisse, Isa Genzken and Rirkrit Tiravanija. And site-specific installations in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland. His works are also featured in private collections in New York and Los Angeles. He has also completed numerous commissions for publishing and the press: five illustrations for the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, two book covers for Juan Villoro published by George Braziller in New York, a cover for the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, and an illustration for Le Monde Diplomatique.
Art Commissions - Illustrations
Art collector - Los Angeles - 2024
1 large piece
Le Monde diplomatique - 2023
1 illustration
The Missouri Review - 2021
Cover - 1 illustration
Domaine du Roc - Villars-sur-Ollon - Switzerland - 2021
2 Diptych (100x70cm)
Süddeutsch zeitung magazin - 2018
Cover - 1 illustration
Domaine du Roc - Villars-sur-Ollon - Switzerland - 2017
1 Triptych (92x73cm - 36x29in)
George Braziller publishing - NYC - 2015-16
Juan Villoro’s books - 2 covers
Shooting Star - Clubhouse in Jackson Hole - Wyoming - 2015
2 pieces (92x73 cm - 36x29 in and 55x33cm - 21,5x13 in)
Art collector - NYC - 2014
1 large piece
Trip and Tpm magazines - São Paulo, Brazil - 2014
2 illustrations
Causette magazine - 2013
2 illustrations
Bavarian Opera - Munich - 2013
5 illustrations - Max Joseph magazine
Alpina Gstaad Palace - permanent collection - 2012
Triptych (92x73 cm - 36x29 in) Ordered by Soho Myriad Art consulting London
Exhibitions - Interventions
Replanter les livres, Jeter l'encre, Retrouver la mémoire - 2021
Lieurac Land Art Festival, Ariège
YONG - 2018
MO.CO. Montpellier - Contemporary art museum
Festival Corée d'ici
RE—PLI - 2015
Collective exhibition - Centre d'art La Fenêtre
Montpellier
More Money More Problems - 2013
Collective exhibition
3/some Art space - Cergy
Urgent !! 3 - 2013
Residence - exhibition - performance - Collectif Patrice Soletti
International Art and Landscape Centre - Vassivière
100 Days 100 Curators - 2012
Online exhibition, selected by Amanda Hunt
Saatchi Gallery - London
Territoire négatif - 2012
Photographic projection based on a reading of the text “Buildings” by Pierre Soletti at the Montpellier Microfestival - La Baignoire
erwan-soyer.tumblr.com
The Artling
Contact
06 77 48 50 32
erwan.soyer.art@gmail.com