I have always liked being surrounded by ancient things, by traces
of the past, whether human or not. When I was younger, every fragment
held in my hands seemed to contain the entirety of a vanished world,
and to hold a mystery that was partly my own. This familiarity with history
and its artefacts has never left me, nor has a deep fascination for the
imagination’s ability to transmute reality.

Today, I am still in search of what can bring me into resonance with time.
The answer comes through encounters with a material, a sound, a text —
something with a history that I can appropriate and reawaken in my own
way, in the present.

I work with objects or words. I dust them with pollen or meteorite powder.
I cover them with honey, with bitumen. I write them endlessly on lead,
on gold. I brewed a beer with ancient Egyptian wheat, which I drank.
I repolished a Greek mirror in oxidised bronze, in which I rediscovered
my own face. I searched for the name of God on a map of India, and
recorded it on magnetic tape.

Crystal or smoke: each idea requires its own realisation. I believe that art
is, like poetry, a spiritual matter. My works are enigmas to be deciphered,
closed doors that whisper: “open me.”

Gabriel Leger — April 2026