French artist Édouard Martinet recycles discarded metal objects and pieces of vehicles, such as a car, bicycle, motorcycle, etc., into fantastical animal sculptures.
Édouard Martinet creates his extraordinary sculptures with scrap from all sorts of machinery and everyday objects. His work reveals elegant, delicate creatures: insects, fish, birds, toads… Martinet transforms a variety of refuse materials, such as rusted pans, typewriters keys, car headlights, bike brakes, vintage watch cases, spectacle arms etc., into works of art. The absolutely meticulous crafting of the work can be watched from the tiniest screw in hair-pin prawn feeler to the road lamp wings of a lady bird. Martinet will take months, even years to find the right component for one of his pieces. When assembling the scrap, he does not solder or weld parts but painstakingly screws them together, which imbues them with character, grace and life. He fits each component into place as if putting together a puzzle of random pieces and parts. Each masterpiece is carefully assembled after having drafted several detailed sketches. This process needs a sufficient amount of time to get from the idea to the completion.
Édouard Martinet
More info: Website, Artsy, Instagram (h/t: ArtistADay).
