AragoRn brings together living and visual arts disciplines. A professional dancer and choreographer since 2001, he has developed a body movement technique of waving, expressives curves, voids and solids in a dynamic relationship. He has worked with major artists on the contemporary scene, including Andy Degroat, Michel Schweizer and Bob Wilson, and with the 14:20 company in its research into ‘New Magic’. These very different experiences led him to focus on the anagogical role of art, its ability to connect us to a higher dimension. As a natural extension of dance and curves in motion, he took up Arabic and Persian calligraphy, which he learned the traditional way for 5 years from the Iranian master Bahman Panahi and the Tunisian calligrapher Hamda Yacoub. In 2021 he settles at La Gare Expérimentale, a group of independent Parisian artists. He has since taken part in a number of exhibitions and individual and group projects, and he works regularly with the Instiut du Monde Arabe and the Museum of Sufi Arts and Culture.
As a self-taught artist, I searched for the dance that was already within me, a movement towards which I naturally gravitated. Unfolding in a fluid and uninterrupted flow, this “dance” gradually took shape as a unique undulating movement, with no beginning nor ending. The signifying aspect of movement and the semantics of forms have always been present in my personal work and collaborations, in search of what is both perpetual, and unchanging. This led me to Arabic calligraphy, a discipline with established rules that seeks to transcend a message, often profound and noble. While remaining sensitive to the impermanence of movement, I work with the techniques specific to Persian calligraphy, the composition and poetic arrangement of words and lines, using the tools of a thousand-year-old tradition. In the autotelic exercise of calligraphy, I find a way to evoke and summon peace and elevation.
biography
I practice Persian calligraphy in the traditional way, working on its classical forms; the «syia mashq» (black exercises), horizontal phrases, word compositions, and «châlipa» (composition of 4 diagonal lines). My tools are the reed-pen, paper and ink.
In another time, I derive these usual forms, applying them a sensitivity to movement inherited from dance.
The never-ending repetition of the calligraphic movement organizes a new space. The lines are compressed, connected, to build a new «weaving of the tradition». The primary meaning of the letter is withdrawn behind the undulations of the whole.
Sometime the strokes free themselves from the lettering symbolism, to leave on the sheet of paper only impulses and momentum, volutes with dynamic weights and sizes.
The hand is guided into new sinuosities, seeking for themselves a natural and universal symbolism ; a trace that contains all movements, all letters.
artistic approach
What gives a line a dynamic meaning? What provides to the sign, even a complex one, the singularity that can strike us?
My work questions the sensation and volume, in connection with the depth, the semantic sense, of the line on the paper.
Enlighten what stands in the inner space, behind the glance, or in the background of the contemplated object.
About the depth of the line on the paper
I’ve always had a particular sensitivity to the relationship between emptiness and fullness, between movement and immobility, which manifests itself in curved lines.
For me, curves express a mysterious relationship between invisible forces.
With calligraphy, my work in the visual arts is an extension of my choreographic experience. After concrete achievements in dance and the world of live performance, I came to the realization that this overall ephemeral form of expression did not allow me, by virtue of its temporality, to have as reflective and introspective a vision as creation on paper. As a performer, it was also difficult to dissociate the artist from the object created, which kept me face-to-face with the audience. Visual art allows me to be side by side with the Public and to look in the same direction, thus encouraging more altruistic reflections and work. This change of direction sheds light on the question of communication with others, on the connection to otherness, and on the human orientation of creation.
Somewhere between the singularity of the sign, symbolic representation and morphological suggestion, this exploration of the dynamics of curves and their effect emanates from a deeper search for balance and universality. What’s constant and universal in the phenomenon of sign interpretation, upstream of any culture, that would reveal to us a component of our deepest nature ?
Traced by the body in space, or the calamus on paper, curves convey a sense of omnipresent movement, of endless dynamics. Where a straight line, as a symbol, evokes linear movement or staticity, a curve, whether simple or complex, invariably conjures up a notion of change in progress, with an uncertain outcome. To fully perceive and apprehend it takes more time. This curve is a perpetual on going transformation ; it defies our ability to predict. There’s something infinite about this movement, a mystery to be contemplated.
I explore this phenomenon through calligraphic line, as I did with physical movement, through reduction to the essential and ceaseless cyclic repetition, hoping to bring out in a synthetic way what would be present in both forms of expression, while avoiding simple juxtaposition. The difference between movement and gesture in dance can be found in calligraphy, between line and morpheme. I’m interested in this boundary: that of the poetic interpretability of a line. To do this, I focus on the trace, the path that takes shape; that which contrasts sufficiently to distinguish a sign, without the signified becoming obvious. No matter how sharp the line, the signifier must remain blurred enough to reveal the observer its own pragmatic implication. Nothing is ever totally defined. Sometimes we see a symbol, but in a whole that retains its mystery; sometimes we see only an abstract form, but that suggests it somewhere contains a symbol.
From this calligraphy, which involves precise gestures and codes, and from this physicality trained with fluidity over many years, results a particular alchemy. The two practices enter into dialogue to bring me to the frontier of what makes a sign, what makes sense.
So far, this research into curves has divided my work into several categories, several series, all inspired by the same subject, but distinguished by their formal subtleties. In this way, the works are grouped according to the movement they contain, sometimes taking their cue from the rush of the wind, sometimes from the meandering of the watercourse, sometimes from the turmoil of the abyss. They reflect, but do not represent, essential aspects of the natural world. In this way, I observe that the more I subtract voluntary or consensual symbolism from a trace, the more these natural elements seem to take the place of signifiers. On the other hand, I find that our interpretation of what we see is influenced by these same components of nature. Whether or not we can distinguish the letters and symbols present in a work of art, what we know and recognize above all, physiologically, remains that same nature. We are indirectly and constantly brought back to our relationship with our natural environment, the one from which we come, the one in which we live. Because this nature exists within us, it inevitably reflects in what we look at, in what we express, in our communication, in the open expression field of arts. To what extent does this shared nature bind us together and enable us to communicate?
I find myself at a crossroads, between dance and calligraphy, between contemporary and traditional art, between Western and Middle Eastern culture. A special place where these diversities combine their influences to give rise to a creation that transcends me.
My intention is to bring to light an invisible link between human beings that stems from our deepest nature and is concealed in a shared psyche.
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