Fabian Dournaux

Mobiles have always had a significance in our lives, we just have to recall our infancy, most of us would have known a mobile gently moving above our cribs, but few of us can probably really recall them from the perspective of an infant, however, we may have later had them hanging in our bedrooms, swirling or chiming in the breeze. Fabian Dournaux is one of those artists that have created the nuance and fascination of mobile sculptures that have enraptured children and adults with the moving narrative they recreate. Captivated by balance and science, Fabian’s sculptures float and balance on themselves with the whimsical assistance of air. Bodies of works that dance without effort in the primary colours of red, yellow, blue and unfolding a stealth of secondary colours moving into black, with contours and shapes unrelated and simultaneously creating a concordant sway. Reflecting an image as the shadowy movements dance with spots of light and darkness creating a whole new narrative and manifestation of something else. Reminiscent of Calder, Bruno Munari and Jean Tinguely, Fabian’s sculptures hold an example of engineering skills and understanding the principles and complexities of balance and harmony.

With a career spanning 40 years in the arts, primarily as an art dealer, Fabian’s fascination with sculpture was initially inspired by Alexander Calder. Made from aluminium, lead and steel, he stealthily created a series of kinetic sculptures over the last several years. His equilibrium he boasts with a cheeky humorous grin, “Is better than Calder!” His compositions are complex and stimulating with his extraordinary detail with the balance and harmony of the structures he creates. His story begins as a boy whose talent was recognised from an early age, born and raised in France, growing up in the Côte d’Azu, his natural ability to mould and create with his hands, his parents encouraged his aptitude and he attended art classes.  As a 12 year old he was educated in the skills of restoration, working with antique furniture from Louis XIV, XV, and XVI with the tutelage of his Professor Tornatore as well as in Italian mosaic and frescoes with Professor Bill Mosley at the College Raoul Dufy until the age of fourteen.

Then in his teens, an elaborate journey began with his family, islands hopping the West Indies, starting in Guadeloupe to support his brother’s new restaurant, then moving to St Martins where he started working as a lifeguard in a hotel, followed by settling in St Martins where his parents opened a nightclub and he was working as a DJ, then the family moved to French Guiana, in South America. At the age of 18 Fabian and his mother returned to France living between Nice and Monte Carlo, where he attended a prestigious art school.

Meanwhile, Fabian had another passion as a young man for tennis, and he played competitively around the world, when he moved with his mother back to the US, he worked to pay for his tennis academy in Washington, however after excessive training, Fabian had to give up tennis after falling ill. He started to work in restoration in furniture, and it wasn’t long before a new career began when artist Lia de Fontenelle a friend of his mother gave Fabian a challenge, to sell one of his paintings, he sold it for 800% more than she had asked for and an extensive career began, as Fabian followed in his mother’s footsteps as an art dealer in New York. His knowledge of art is extensive, with the expertise of artists such as Renoir and Picasso to name a few,  and the family owning a large collection of art. Fabian’s forte was American and French Impressionism, he built a lasting friendship and working relationship with Robert Rienzo, the two of them creating exhibitions in New York.

Fabian travelled next to Florida and North Carolina, where he opened an art gallery. At 49, he visited Tennessee, this is where he met his wife. “I fell in love in a second!” he exclaims. It was a month after meeting that they started dating, and he returned to North Carolina, staying in a cabin for six months and created his first sculpture, as he describes it “out of love”. This was the beginning of a career as an artist. As a religious person Fabian describes his belief that God was with him when he installed the artwork, at the Grace Point Fellowship in Tennessee, and he describes feeling his presence. The sculpture then went to the Eclipses Gallery in New York.  Fabian returned to live in Tennessee where he opened a museum and continued to pursue his passion as a sculptor in mobile and kinetic sculptures.

 

I asked Fabian what made him decide that he wanted to produce mobiles, he recalls, when as a boy his brother bought him a necklace, with his name on it. He resonates how he started to play with the metal, “I couldn’t play with gold” so he played with other soft metals, with that he pulls out a long piece of aluminium, and starts to bend and shape it in front of me, creating letters, he tells me how he fell in love with pliable metal, he also resonates about a job he had working for a satellite company when he was 18, it’s this being able to create something without having to plan it, this love of the soft pliable appliance and the aspect and skills of balance and proportion, that challenge he puts on himself to precede himself. He recalls how his teacher told him, you can do anything, believing in his ability and talent. He describes his love of Alexander Calder and Miro, and how they influenced him. When I asked him how he gets the balance, his answer is quite blunt “On my own” whilst he smiles broadly, as he speaks nuances of the charm of his French accent soften his narrative, as he gives me a tour of his artworks in his studio, and how everything is balanced off each other. I asked him why balance, “Because I can do something most people can’t” and again that humorous smile, emphasising the story of when he hung up his first piece and God showed up.

When I ask him if he could have any artwork, he replies he would have artworks by American artist Frederic Remington, whose works are renowned for mainly depicting cowboys and American Indians, for the boy from the Cote de Azur in France and his journey through the West Indies, to his present home in Tennessee, it does resonate with the freedom of pioneers and the liberation of artistic expression.

Interview: Antoinette Haselhorst