LE SAINT, TECHNICAL BOOK, 2021
Franklin Azzi has designed a light installation for the Genius Loci exhibition at Gio Ponti’s villa L’Ange Volant (‘the flying angel’, built in 1927). Like a halo, Le SAINT is a ring in neon and steel; suspended outside the villa, it offers a lyrical salute to the resident angel.
Floating as if by magic in air and space, defying the laws of gravity, Le SAINT beckons, catching the eye with elegance and discretion. It does not impose itself, diffusing its luminous aura into the sky, composing a visual beacon towards which everything converges. Positioning itself half way between art and engineering, LeSAINT is an illustration of Franklin Azzi’s deep-rooted appreciation of minimalism. It makes one think of Dan Flavin and his neon structures, of course, but also of Donald Judd, with whom he shares a number of aesthetic preoccupations: the attention given to the scale of the work, its relationship with its environment. An understanding of space that calls as much on the skills of the architect as those of the sculptor, thus rejecting the boundaries between the different disciplines. Franklin Azzi’s loyalty to the minimalist spirit is also seen in the very fabrication of the work: simplicity of form, use of geometry, employing industrial materials whose smooth and impersonal finish, free of all subjectivity, contributes to the way in which the work is perceived, in time and in space. This attachment to the importance of place also gives away the attention paid by Franklin Azzi to Land Art, in particular work by artist Robert Smithson, as much as for his early works in pure, minimal forms, as for his works in nature with the inherent notion of entropy.
Present yet discreet, Franklin Azzi’s Le SAINT marks the exterior of the villa L’Ange Volant with its sober, uncluttered lines, respectful of history and context.
Domitille d'Orgeval, art critic and achibition curator
A connected work
Suspended in the air, slight in appearance, the LE SAINT light installation displays a technical process that is complex, as much in its design phases as in its installation on site. Franklin Azzi drew on craft skills of the highest quality. Compagnons de France, craftsmen and engineers intervened throughout the various stages of creation.
The ring made by artist metalworkers Dunod Mallier is composed of a steel alloy in crafted metal – the perfect marriage between resistance and lightness. Its innovation resides at once in the bespoke fabrication, selection of materials, attention to detail, meticulous assembly, choice of accessories, patinas and finishes.
Craftsmen glass blowers Vito Enseignes made the filiform neon tubes (four segments of 14mm in diameter), subtly inserted into the metal band.
C&E Ingénierie analysed the distribution of forces, the distances and the tension necessary to define the anchorage points of the cables in order to allow the structure to be installed at a height of three meters among the trees. Particular care was given to the ring’s horizontality and stability.
Finally, the piece was installed by abseilers from Hévéa. On top of their agility in manoeuvring between the five trees, they had to make individual adjustments for each tree depending on its species and form.
LE SAINT, art installation, is a product of Franklin Azzi’s drive to ally art and craft, beauty and material.