Sculpture Tension, release and vulnerability

Duality

Tension was born of a contrasting, almost torn, inner moment: an impulse towards freedom and, at the same time, awareness of a still-present limit.
On one side of the sculpture, the form stretches, straightens, seeks openness. On the other, the material folds and contracts, expressing a darker emotion – a sadness, a restraint, an invisible weight.
This duality is the strength of the work.

The silhouette, full and slender, seems to carry within it an energy that seeks to make its way out of what constrains it.
Vertical, nervous lines glide along the back and torso, like the traces of a restrained movement, of a will that still hesitates to assert itself.
The patinated bronze, dark and golden, reinforces this impression of inner struggle: the light catches certain areas, while others remain in shadow, as if the sculpture were oscillating between awakening and suffocation.

A double-sided piece, born of a real-life truth

Tension is one of Catherine Chavigny’s most autobiographical sculptures.
At the time of its creation, a double reality was apparent: the sensation of liberation – the conviction of having taken an important step – and, at the same time, the unexpected appearance of another face, that of a more buried sadness, of a pain still alive.
This ambivalence was inscribed in the clay before it was even thought of: one side open and free, the other tense and dark.
It is this raw sincerity that gives the sculpture its power.

The material doesn’t lie: it says what we don’t always see ourselves.
In this respect, Tension is an essential piece – a mirror of a moment when we think we’ve freed ourselves, while the road to true liberation still continues.

Towards liberation

The sculpture bears witness to a passage.
It does not represent freedom, but the path towards it: a fragile in-between space, where strength and vulnerability coexist.
The forward movement is perceptible, even if it remains hesitant.
There is a promise in this form – that of an openness that, one day, will become total.

Tension reminds us that freedom is not a sudden state, but a process.
That sometimes we have to go through the pain to extract the light.
And that in this in-between, in this zone of tug-of-war, the greatest transformation is often born.