ChateauLaCoste

Tunga (Antonio José de Barros Carvalho e Mello Mourão) is an artist whose highly enigmatic work takes shape in a variety of media, referring as much to the animal world as to botany, mineralogy, astronomy and alchemy.

The artist used a variety of unusual materials, such as magnets, hair braids, networks of wires, bones and everyday objects, in his installations. This multitude of materials is one of the primary characteristics of his work, which often refers to the transmutation of reality, the transformation of matter or the links between matter and spirit.

When designing his work for Château La Coste, Tunga spent over a month on site, discovering the region and its craftsmanship. As a result, he chose to work with wrought iron for the balance systems and local stone for the architecture.

For the counterweights, he opted for more exotic materials:
Brazilian quartz, a glass prism from the Czech Republic and magnets from China, randomly placed for one of the structures and organized into a compact block for the other.
His tryptic work can be analyzed as portals, points of passage from reality to fiction. In fact, the title of the work refers to the “ferryman of souls” deities whose function is to judge human beings and guide them from the world of the living to that of the afterlife.

BTS shoot: Aleksandra Proscherin