Christophe MARGA

If Christophe Marga does not like to be called an artist, or craftsman, he readily recognizes himself as a unique artist. Without ever having studied in an art school, he possesses the taste, talent and inventiveness above all, the great freedom of true designers. All stages of her busy life manifested her desire to experiment with new forms and bring beauty to life.

As a child, he was passionate about the ladies' works of his Angevin grandmother, drawing the cross stitch in pearl cotton on huge canvas. Later, here he is copying the heroes of his fanzines, the drawings of Serre or of the Chained Duck. As a young man, he sets to the sewing machine to assemble the "salmon" of the paragliding sails of which he enjoys constantly inventing new models. At sixteen, hesitating between a thousand trades, he would see himself as a cook because he likes nothing more than to decorate the dishes concocted by his parents, but he will abandon the competition of the Hotel School of the rue Médéric in Paris for the School of apprenticeship of the Compagnons de Pantin where he is introduced to the art of thermician.

And this is the discovery of steel, copper, cast iron. Christophe was seventeen years old, and very quickly, because he was gifted, he began to manipulate the arc and the autogen with as much dexterity as the needle and the sewing machine in the past. Soon soldering and soldering no longer hold any secrets for him, so he will pass his CAP in a year and become a team leader under the age of twenty. We owe him the entire fountain on the Place de l'Hotel de Ville in Paris, with its more than thirty pumps! Two years later, becoming Alsthom’s youngest works supervisor, he leads “old hands” to build the boiler rooms for major hospitals in France.

His forward-looking intelligence makes him quickly climb the ranks. He became a business manager at Alsthom, but was fatally bored. He lacks manual work, and so does combat with metal. Several positions of high responsibility follow one another, but, to take off, Christophe invests himself completely in a paragliding club, the Corbacks, which he creates with a group of former passionate paratroopers, see more ... Up there, between clouds and snow-capped peaks, he finds inspiration.

But Christophe Marga is not a sweet dreamer. He is a man of visions, plans and achievements. He likes to fight with matter, to give it shape, even if it means leaving part of his flesh there. It took him eight years to transform the near ruin that had become the home of Professor Grancher, Edmond Rostand's doctor in Cambo-les-Bains, into an elegant and warm welcome.

But if he has all the generosity to do so, Christophe does not have the soul of a hotelier. What drives him is to draw chimerical spaces and do everything possible to give them substance. In 2012 the superb adventure of the metal tree and the "guest nests" begins. Christophe strives day after day to erect a work worthy of Jules Verne, twelve meters high, made of 17 tonnes of steel, in which three cozy nesting boxes open to the public in May 2014 are nestled.

Since then, in his underground lair worthy of a modern Vulcan, he has never stopped drawing and sculpting the fruit of his imaginary constructions. He heats and twists steel chopsticks, bending them at will. Like the potter dominating the earth on the lathe, he masters fire and metal to extract plants and fancy creatures, all illuminated by glass and light.

Over time, the symbolic dimension was added to the pleasure of the eyes and the metal gardens began to rub shoulders with increasingly complex sets where humans finally emerge from the ground (Ball games) to stand up (Rebond ) towards the highest aspirations (Little Prince and Rostand). From now on, Christophe Marga’s ever-lively inspiration explores new avenues where the question of man's rooting in the universe is constantly being rethought (Happiness and Our Earth - under construction).

Like the central character of Happiness, the artist grasps the world head-on, embraces it and invites us to turn it towards what it conceals of the most beautiful, the noblest. The metal ball does not get stuck in the material, crushed by the morose delight, but always bounces towards the light: this unchecked arrow invites us to the joy of immanence - that of the man who plays or of the mother who breastfeeds - as well as the fervor of sacred climbs, rock or spirit peaks.

Christophe Marga has finally let the artist unfold in him, and find his own path, original if there is one. There is in him the soul of an African blacksmith who dances with the spirits of earth and fire. Its paw combines the polish of steel, the shimmer of glass and the radiance of light to hatch stylized forms, both refined and barbaric, raw and chiseled. An art of Nibelungen passed to the polisher of human emotions.