Mais j'ai fait mon traineau! (Teetering stacks series) Painting by Justine Formentelli

Painting: Acrylic, Ink, collage, Charcoal on Paper.

In creating this precarious balance, I wanted to reflect on the fragility of life. If we added just one more thing even a tiny feather, the whole pile up could come tumbling down. The beauty and the poignancy of such situation is what interest me. The fact that we know that there is a high probability that eventually the structure will collapse and will no longer be and yet that insistence of reaching impossible heights through the piling up of various shapes and objects.

-Explore that edge between balance and destruction. It is on the brink of failure but also success (since it hasn’t fallen yet). It is an extraordinary feat to defy gravity and physics with such an accumulation. The outlook on this piece depends on whether you are a pessimist person full of doubts or an optimist who sees what is actually working in the present moment.

The precariousness of the arrangement is also a meditation on the present, that we live in a changing environment where everything is in flux. Whatever we achieve is always at the risk of collapsing as we are never certain of the future and whatever will arise. (and we can’t even complete rely on the pas as some things have been forgotten and may suddenly surge if triggered by a new element). Most of the time, we forget the impermanence of our achievements, of our life as we know it as we are concentrated on the building, the constructing of a meaningful whole. It takes a shocking event to remind us of the fragility of our existence, how everything is just hanging by a thread and that the patiently constructed equilibrium can be blown over like mere leaves in a gust of wind.