Perhaps it’s glib to say that Pascal Faivre’s artistic destiny was written in stone, but it’s true.
By trade, Faivre is the last of eight generations of stonemasons in his French-Armenian family’s history. And since 2001, he has created architectural finishes and old world French masonry installations throughout California.
For the past seven years, however, Faivre has also been directing his craftsmanship into a new series of art works in limestone, concrete and mixed media that twists timelines, mashes up cultural iconographies and ultimately makes one smile and think.
Under the moniker Cube8, Faivre’s aesthetic is aptly captured in works like a vast concrete boom box that requires a forklift to move. Its scale is in direct proportion to its whimsy, and inherent to it all is a droll cultural commentary. For example, as music streaming services and smart phones have sounded the death knell for the once ubiquitous ’80s-era tape player, Faivre flips the technological ephemerality and casts it as a concrete monument to a host of cultural signifiers. Exploring this space is one of the themes of Faivre’s solo exhibition, Permanence, at Sonoma’s Alley Gallery.
“I’m inspired by the possibility of creating a sensation that perhaps these could be artifacts salvaged from another era,” says Faivre of the pieces in the exhibit, which utilize stone, plaster and concrete “to explore and create connective threads between ancient and modern cultural aesthetics and expressions,” as his website explains.
Another work first appears to be a hieroglyphic depiction of the Egyptian god Anubis as if lifted from the wall of an ancient ruin. But upon closer examination, one sees that the jackal-headed deity is actually manipulating a turntable as a DJ.
As Faivre explains, he’s a “prankster” at heart and yet, he’s driven by another impulse.
“My real drive is authenticity. I love authenticity, even when I do music or with friends. You know, I like to be authentic. I like authentic people. Authenticity to me is more important than originality. Authenticity is automatically original. But originality is not automatically authentic,” he observes.
“I like to push boundaries to a place where I push for mistakes, and hopefully I get a good mistake—I get an artistic mistake,” Faivre explains. “I use my knowledge, my craft, my traditional work, and I push it. And then I know exactly how it has to be.”
He adds, “I want it to be beautiful to the eye. That’s the first thing. Look at it. And like, it’s voluptuous. It’s got great proportions, great texture, great color. And then the story begins to emerge.”
When that story emerges, Faivre is in his happy place.
“The work will go on for a year or two—I’m not making croissants, right?” he says with a laugh. “I could do one thing for the next five years, as long as I’m having fun.”
That fun includes using his work as an occasion to foment community.
“For me, it’s not ‘Hey, look at my beautiful thing,’” he says. “I invite my friends, and we can have a glass of wine, have a little party like a wedding. You make postcards, invite everybody. And then it’s an opportunity to put all your friends together.”
‘Permanence’ runs May 3 -10 at Alley Gallery, 148 E. Napa St., Sonoma. An opening reception runs 4-8pm, Saturday, May 3. For more information, visit cube8.art and alley.gallery.
