Evariste Richer is an artist born in Montpellier in 1969. His work is in line with the now historical approach of conceptual artists. Inspired by the history of science and the conventions used to represent and understand the world, the artist stages the tools invented by man to define his place in the universe. He gives substance to units of measurement intended to quantify what appears to us as immaterial: the infinitely large and the infinitely small, time and space.

Invited to the Cirva between 2015 and 2017 in partnership with the Observatoire des sciences de l'univers Institut Pythéas, Evariste Richer imagined a monumental work: Le Grand Tout, the transposition in glass of a box of atoms, a pedagogical tool used by chemistry students to model molecules in three dimensions. The spectacular installation is composed of one hundred and twenty-two atoms of nine different colors. This colored alphabet highlights the sculptural dimension of this representation. The juxtaposition of all the atoms deployed in space materializes what the artist calls a "constellation of possibilities". Each atom in glass is reflected in the whole formed by the others and draws the possible in its pure state. Paradoxically, the operation of reduction of the world contained in Le Grand Tout consists in a demultiplication of the size of the atom. The human scale thus becomes the measure of the infinite: each atom would fit in the artist's hand. Thus the map of the sky and the smallest unit of matter telescope in an inverted vertigo.

Following the presentation of a working stage at the Vasarely Foundation in 2017, Le Grand Tout is unveiled for the first time in its complex totality, thanks to the precious support of the Museums of Marseille. At the heart of the Vieille Charité Center, the installation is presented under the dome of the chapel designed by Pierre Puget, bringing physical, astrophysical and metaphysical resonance, at the crossroads of the concept and its incarnation.

Photos: Cirva - D. Giancatarina