While matter served as a foundation for light in this first series, Eric Beauplace presents a new collection where sculpture is more clearly defined by its formality. Whether placed on a surface or interacted with, each piece in this new arc represents a continuation of the artist's exploration, where the dialogue is no longer primarily with light, but rather gives full voice to pure materiality. Experimentation, here too, becomes both process and outcome, extending the work beyond the finished object and offering the viewer an open and sensory experience. Matter is pushed to its limits, hollowed out, then enriched, revealing all its facets.

First and foremost, Eric Beauplace chooses a malleable material with which he enters into a symbiosis: clay. Guided by the movements of his hands, it bends and undulates, like an improvised dance, sometimes cracking, fissured, or punctuated by outgrowths. The artist accompanies, guides without directing, allowing himself to be surprised, creating chance and then achieving balance. Each pose borders on abstraction, but an organic, almost mineral abstraction. The fired clay becomes ceramic, freezing a moment, a tension. To this matrix, other materials are added, conglomerating, coexisting, sometimes on the surface, sometimes in the depths.

Superimpositions, both visual and imaginative, of elements that might not initially seem compatible: porcelain, glass, linen canvas... Eric Beauplace establishes a complex process, laying the groundwork—materials, time, techniques—but without a predetermined path, in order to explore all its possibilities. A play of colors, textures, but also of thought processes and narratives.

The work of the hands, the heat of the kiln, the various additions and modifications, create a collection imbued with history that could indeed evoke objects resurrected from ancient times, left to the vagaries of nature and time. Artifacts unearthed from an excavation site, or brought up from the ocean depths, as if extracted from a lost treasure, Eric Beauplace's works seem to convey their preciousness as much as their fragility. A fragility akin to that of humankind in the face of its finitude and the tranquil power of nature, which always ultimately reclaims its dominion. Every human creation would thus inevitably become, with time, a mere imprint of a brief passage, however glorious. If in his first series, the artist established a dialogue between the viewer and the work as an object of beauty where the gaze lingers and is amplified, this collection, which continues his work, could here reverse the roles. These unique new sculptures seem to look at us, inviting us to both observation and introspection.

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