Evariste Richer, Les Métamètres, 2024

Evariste Richer explores human representations to take their measure and excess. With rigor and poetry, he borrows from scientific and epistemological tools, standards and procedures, reinvents them and recounts the ineffable. Extending the story of the standard metre, deposited since 1799 in the iron cabinet of the French National Archives, and of the policy of unifying measurements under the Revolution, Les Métamètres offers a contemporary variation on space, time, perception and scale relationships. Each of the three sculptures, on the scale of the building, features a scale from 0 to 100, in reference to the standard metre, and a gradation of polychrome marble, from darkest to lightest. Between scenery and geological strata, Les Métamètres probe the history of the site in which they are set, playing on distortions in the visual experience. They underline the architecture while marking the entrances to the new premises of the Ministry of Culture, and invite visitors to stroll through the Quadrilatère des archives.

Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture under the 1% art scheme for the Camus project at the Quadrilatère des archives.