Accumulation
He is painting, absorbed in his work. Behind his thin, round glasses, his gaze is lowered. The photograph is veiled by a translucent, textured surface that blurs his presence.
Behind him, in front of him, even masking half of his face, tubes pile up. Forms accumulate and repeat, pressed against one another. He then appears through this thickness, as if caught within the very material he manipulates.
He is Arman, a twentieth-century artist known for his accumulations.
His art is made of everyday objects gathered, compressed and multiplied until they saturate space. His work questions the relationship our societies maintain with objects, between sacralisation, overconsumption and destruction.
This is not a portrait that reveals an inner life. It is the portrait of a man engulfed by the material of the world. A world that is too full, which the artist does not seek to escape but to push to the point of destruction.

Accumulation
It is a man at work. He is very focused. Around him, there are lots of objects. Tubes. Shapes. Many. So many.
They are in front of him, behind him, all around him. They pile up. They touch each other. They take up all the space.
It is like a bedroom when you stack too many toys. You can’t move through it anymore. You don’t know where to look. You just think it is too full. And when things take up all the space, you disappear a little.