Early Dynastic (V), 1992-93

Early Dynastic (IV) was commissioned from the artist for the entrance area of the “Capitole” station on line A of the Toulouse subway system. The area was designed by the architect Jacques Munvez adjacent to the underground remains from the Roman period.1
In the area where the automatic ticket machines are located a square pattern set in stainless steel profiles in the pavement – the pattern is oblique to the spatial axes – determines the positions of nine vertical elements made of Grey Tarn granite. Each vertical element, in turn, consists of one, two, three or four columns placed one on top of the other, each of which equal in height to half of the column underneath.2 The nine elements are situated so that each time they mark the vertices of a square in the floor pattern. In the areas where, in proximity to the surrounding walls, the squares are incomplete, the elevation of the missing columns are represented on the walls by stainless steel inlays in the white-painted finishing. Opposite the automatic ticket machines, the two elements that should be located there are represented by a plan view, set in the floor.
Located on the station’s lower level, close to the tracks, three more elevations of a column have been inlaid in the wall and there is a plan view set in the finishing of the ground.3
“In archaeological terminology the words ’Early Dynastic’ indicate a specific period for ancient Egyptian architecture. As the title of the project for the Capitole station, the term recalls underground architecture, founded on the repetition ad infinitum of the form of a column beyond the boundary of the site. Its eventual proliferation or reduction does not depend so much on observation as it does on the hypotheses of interpretation: whatever we see, little does it matter whether it is an ongoing construction or a ruin, a journey out or back”.4
The number included in the title tells us that this is the fifth version of Early Dynastic, a group of works that began in 1971 (GPO-0228, GPO-0257, GPO-0324 [reproduced in travertine, GPO-0354], GPO-0399).

1 The work was finished in June 1993, in time for the opening of the first subway line in Toulouse. A total of fifteen artists’ works for just as many stations on line A were commissioned from Beate Honsell-Weiss, Guy-Rachel Grataloup, Takis, Daniel Coulet, Dimitri Orlac, Jean-Paul Chambas, Hervé et Richard Di Rosa, Olivier Debré, Noël Cuin, François Morellet, François Bouillon, Giulio Paolini, Felice Varini, Bernard Gerboud and Jean-Louis Garnell.
2 The base module for the pattern, measuring 270 x 270 cm, echoes the height of the columns, which in turn corresponds to that of the space itself.
3 Originally, instead of the current drawing in the ground, there was a column made up of three overlapping elements. After technical work was carried out in the area, in 2013, the artist suggested removing the column and replacing it with a plan view of the same, carved in a stainless steel plaque of the same size as the base of the original column.
4 The artist in Prix Triennal Ianchelevici 1997. Prix d’Intégration de Sculpture monumentale à l’Urbanisme, exhibition catalogue, Liège, Salle d’exposition du Musée en Plein Air du Sart-Tilman, 1997, p. 40.