I dream of ageless objects, and stirring images of an indefinite time engraved in my memory, and I contemplate in wonderment beauty emanating from spirituality in art.
A world of mysteries, symbols, legends and myths haunts and defies me. Was I not born in Georgia, ancient kingdom of Colchis, later Iberia, land of the Golden Fleece, and ill-fated love of Jason and Medea where, for having created Man and stolen the sacred fire, From-Theuth of the Scytians, the Prometheus of the Greeks, was chained by Zeus to Kazbek's summit!
Delivered from my past, it is in Paris that I can recall at last the lost civilizations that inspired me, and express my emotion before the magic traces that reveal identical symbols from Sumer to Assur, from the Scythians to the Hittites, the Etrucans to the Celts and Iberians, from the Achemenids to the Sassanians, the Avars to the Abbassidians, from Fayyum to Petra, Phrygia to Lydia, Urartu to Luristan…
The populations migrate and their cultures intertwine to better fascinate me. Drawing from art's sources, I look for the universal, and express myself with rare materials which forever delight us.
Faithful witness of our most distant past, metal defies space and time, and reaches us millenniums later, intact and wrapped in mystery. Noble and enduring, have not gold and silver been dedicated from time immemorial to objects of the table, the Treasury of the Cult, the Divine, and Sacred!
The same is true of stone of which I like the quintessence, the colours, the light, and the harmonious name: lapis-lazuli, obsidian, sodalite, rock crystal, hawk's eye, labradorite, calcedony, carnelian, jade, amphibolite… Ravishing and unreal, you are infinitely timeless, and I like to wed you with the metal I hammer.
Then comes the hand, the irreplaceable, indispensable and inimitable handiwork. Since technic there is, let it be obvious and quickly forgotten. There is no modernity in this craftmanship, and my technics are archaic. I forge myself anvils and peens as needed for the piece and shapes I wish to create. Then I work on the material, without any preliminary drawing, guided solely by the metal's specificity and the stone's mystery.
Because I want each object to be unique! Singularity gives the object its marvellous dimension, eclipsing its purpose to leave only the delight of the eyes, of the voluptuous touch. It is also what compels invention and imagination. It is creativity that counts, and I create today a world of shapes and fiction by giving free range to my enthusiasm.
Unique objects, testimony of my love and journey on this earth: ciboriums, rhytons, amphoras, hanaps, ewers whose names I like to sing; fantasy menagerie, bulls metamorphosed in stags, gazelles made equidies, magical characters from another world, I forge you during the day and visit you at night, in my dreams.
Contemporary witness of bygone ages, and archaeologist of present times, Goudji recalls, recreates, transforms and suggests. His reference is no longer the present, it is eternity.
Jacques Santrot
