This idea of energy seen not as a reserve to be consumed but as a resource to be managed is precisely that of Zen, whose teaching moves through koans, short anecdotes containing a paradox that have the purpose of awakening awareness in the disciple. Of course a single design object cannot change the world; it can, however, like a koan, contain a full idea of a different world. As a material photogram of another vision of things, the object-koan gathers into itself darkness and light, gravity and liberty, inertia and openness.
The works of Ferréol Babin can be considered koan-objects, in this sense, moments of a personal pathway made of nimble synergies between sign and respect, acceleration and expectation, in which the abstract beauty of digital clouds closely coexists with the ancestral opacity of telluric forces. Stone and poetry, technological and humanistic respect for material, artisan wisdom and the possibilities of industry converge in the concrete clarity of Babin’s design, giving rise to calm, vibrant, eternal and transient objects. Messengers of the dawn/dusk of a new/ancient world.