from September 2012 to September 2013

Florian Sumi works on sculpture in combination with other practices, in a collaborative spirit. Dance, music, engineering, design… He thinks about the inherent nature of these skills and his works emerge from encounters between these techniques. The exhibition « The Makers » (at the Musée du Septennat, Château-Chinon) follows Florian Sumi’s residency at the “Arts du Bois” (woodwork) course at the Lycée des Métiers François Mitterand in Château-Chinon. The residency, related to the label “Excellence des Métiers d’Art” put in place by the Drac Bourgogne and the Académie de Dijon is part of a dynamic of exchanges and reciprocal training between an artistic practice and artisanal knowhow. The students from the woodwork section, guided by teachers, thus produced a work by Florian Sumi.

The relationships between materials, works, and skills are central to his thinking and throughout the exhibition he suggests that we consider the practice of “those that make things” in three ways: mechanical genius, conceptual genius and manual genius. The Makers are those who transform materials into objects, through a craft mechanism in which each individual has a role to play, so that the manufacturing process may begin.