Qi Flowers de Christian Delecluse – Ephemeral work in the sculpture garden

Ephemeral installation in the sculpture garden, of 6 June to 6 July, on the occasion of the Rendez-vous aux jardins.
400 mirror-polished stainless steel qi-gong balls on stainless steel rods.

Qigong balls, from Baoding in China, have been used for millennia in traditional Chinese medicine to restore harmony between humans and their natural environment. Placed at the end of a stem and arranged “naturally” in a pasture, three hundred anchorite qi gong balls transform into a garden of artificial wildflowers that sway in the wind.

The manufacture of a perfect sphere in mirror-polished stainless steel bears witness to the technical evolution of human societies from the prehistoric forges of the Iron Age to the blast furnaces of the industrial revolution. Despite their high technicality, Qi-flowers blend into the natural environment without trying to dominate it. The fineness of their stem allows them to sway in the wind like real flowers.

“Qi Flowers” ​​revives the tradition of the medieval garden, who played the essential role of intermediary between the city and the forest, between the civilized world and that of undomesticated wild instincts. Absorbing the image of everything around them, these steel flowers build a moving unity between the sky, the earth, and the beings who populate it.

Qi Flowers was a winner of Horizon Sancy, as part of Horizon Sancy and at the Maubuisson Abbey Art Center during the summer 2021.

Qi Flowers was also exhibited in Ar’Milin Park for the 22nd edition of Jardin des Arts during the summer 2024.

Christian Delécluse is a visual and sound artist who builds immersive environments to evolve our representations of the world towards a relational ecology.
His projects are most of the time art-science projects that transcend the duality of rationality. / emotions to explore other forms of sensitive resonance with living things.
His projects reflect the complexity of the world and explore situations where borders are cracked and reveal a coexistence of opposing forces inherent to life..
By resonance and the play of reflections, his works reveal the sacred dimension of the living according to Roger Caillois : “the sacred is what gives life and what delights it, it is the source from which it flows, the estuary from which it is lost”.