Laurent Le Deunff’s work revolves around sculpture and drawing. Playfully mischievous and fictional, his creations appear to have been born in a fantasized universe, echoing a familiar, ancestral culture.
Porte Sauvetout was one of the gates in Nantes’ 13th-century-era fortifications. Destroyed in 1790, these ramparts were rediscovered in the 1990s during an archaeological dig. Only the base of the tower is still visible today.
Now standing at the edge of tram line nº 3 amidst the surrounding sprawl of contemporary architecture, this medieval vestige is a true space-time anomaly in the city’s urban development.
Playing with time and space in his own work, Le Deunff imagined a “totem” animal for this relic in the form of a beaver with a fish tail that he first spotted in a medical book from the Middle Ages.
Through this figure of a beaver overlooking his new territory from a fallen tree (50 ft.), Le Deunff spins a playful yarn for this urban vestige. With this anachronistic bronze figure and its silver tail – itself a fictitious representation taken from popular beliefs – the artist propels the animal into another time frame and into an incongruous, anachronistic scenario.
Laurent Le Deunff was born in 1977. He lives and works in Bordeaux, and is represented by Galerie Sémiose (Paris).