Lucas Guilbert - Sculptor
Lucas Guilbert is a Montreal-born sculptor whose art is deeply rooted in his multicultural upbringing. As a child of a French Canadian mother and French-Mexican father, his diverse background influenced his artistic practice from its inception. After many years of traveling, he settled in Australia in 2007, where he was inspired by the unique natural landscape and paradigm of his new home.
Lucas Guilbert's sculptural work explores sustainable materials sourced from the diverse ecological regions of the Australian continent. He focuses primarily on wood, which allows him to be creatively connected to the biological roots anchored in the material. Guilbert's sculptures offer an awakening of an ancestral and mythical response in an urbanized context. He seeks to challenge our relationship with the wild and reinstates the unapologetic elements of natural beauty in a hyper-modern, often sterile, and regimented world.
The sculptor's artistic practice centers around wood, offering a window into a symbiotic and rare history. Every cellulose fiber of the sourced timber reveals an archaeology of sorts, allowing for an exploration into the fundamental structures of biological life. Guilbert's artistic treatment of wood, from raw and polished to aged, burnished, naturally distressed, quenched, and burnt, accentuates the natural beauty of the material.
Lucas Guilbert's sculptural forms evoke a feeling of tension and harmony, embodying the connection between material and spiritual, wild and tame, masculine and feminine. His work encourages a discourse to occur between the ecological and the man-made, between the natural, external sphere and the human, inner sphere. The sculptures are a testament to the complex beauty of the natural material from which they are made, and they offer a space for the viewer to connect with the individual story of the tree.
In the words of the artist himself: "I aim to create sculptures that offer a place of connection, where the viewer can experience the wildness of nature within a man-made environment. My work is a bridge between the natural and the human-made worlds, where the two can coexist and thrive."
Lucas Guilbert's sculptural practice is a testament to the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Through his art, he encourages a re-evaluation of our relationship with the natural world and a deep appreciation of the beauty inherent in sustainable materials.
