Isabelle, specialist of the patina at the Susse Paris foundry and the sculptor on the day of the finishing of the sculpture «Harmony».

Self-taught throughout a very atypical career, Jean-Paul Floch sculpts through his hands-on knowledge of the human form’s secrets, with no need for models.

Born October 20, 1949 in Guer, Brittany, he first experienced artistic expression as a child in his parents' wooden-toy factory where they encouraged his creativity by asking him to imagine decorations for the toys they manufactured. It was a great joy to him to see some of his creations reproduced on the playthings they marketed.

Music and handball were constants in his adolescence, and with his two brothers he joined a group of musicians to perform in rock and blues concerts. On several occasions in 1972-1973, the group shared the stage with Daniel Balavoine who was preparing a recording.

Impassioned by the magic of country “bone-setters”, he undertook physiotherapy studies partly financed by selling the bags, clogs and leather paintings he made. His fellow students bought the bags because they were personalized. It was also at this time that he tried his hand at wood sculpture.

Late 1976 he met a Corsican sculptor, a Grand Prix de Rome, who strongly encouraged him.

However, in 1977, he devoted himself completely to his profession as a physiotherapist, putting off sculpture for later.

His sense of adventure brought him to travel to India many times where he carried out research on ancestral India’s medical knowledge.

He invented his own manual therapy technique. Further, through relieving his patients’ pain, he grew ever more familiar with the human body, gaining an in-depth understanding of what gives it its outer manifestation.

Through observation and work, he discovered how the visible part of the human body harmonizes with the unseen organs, muscles, bones and tendons, realizing that this harmonization follows very precise hidden laws and phenomena.

His experience in physical therapy drove his return to sculpture in 2000, when he began creating realistic works, full of life. The piece was first developed in his mind, and then shaped with his hands directly, as he explains below:

…“The essential idea that I want to express in a sculpture comes into being first in my mind [as a fourth dimension]. When this fourth dimension becomes precise and stable, the form appears spontaneously, alive with movement, and whole and clear to me if I close my eyes. This form is an evolving energy taking shape in an internally visible way, perfectly expressing the pure idea, as if washed of my own emotions with waters that are not of my origin. It is this fourth dimension that marks the sculpture, thus filling its surrounding space with vibrations emanating from the materialized form.“…

Jean Paul Floch hence decides never to distort or caricature the soul’s garment that is the human body.

In August 2000, the Michelangelo drawing of Cleopatra inspired him to create his first sculpture, “Nostalgia”.

In 2002, he declared himself an independent sculptor on his tax declaration.

He participated in several exhibitions, especially at the Carrousel du Louvre for the Salon des Beaux-Arts in Paris in December 2002, the theme of which was “Europe Seen by Artists”. He presented “Harmony”, a sculpture with planetary symbolism.

In 2003 he was among the 10 sculptors selected for the Jean Moulin competition. The jury chose a local sculptor to erect 2 monumental statues representing Jean Moulin: one in Béziers, the city of his birth and another in Caluire, the city of his arrest.

Everything was going very well for the sculptor who began selling in 2004.

It is at this moment that a Social Fund took advantage of the artist’s state of weakness (a medical leave of which it was aware) to falsify a social security law to make him believe in an "obligation” to belong to the special regime for artists, which is a lie.

Initially, Jean-Paul Floch trusted this social fund which claimed to be “specialized in advising on and applying social welfare laws” until he discovered its hidden offense three years later.

The justice system ignored the falsified legal provisions, rejecting his requests for reimbursement of his consequential overpayments taken through breach of trust, and sentenced him to pay €2,000 to the very social fund tampering with the law, in opposition to the opinion of the two other social funds in agreement with the artist!!

In 2008, a very promising collaboration with a Californian decorator became impossible due to a lack of financial resources. To make this opportunity happen, it would have sufficed that French justice enforce the accounting obligations of the offending fund.

It is obvious that Jean Paul Floch is the victim of discrimination (for what reasons?). Why this social welfare and legal mistreatment when it is possible in France to practice one’s art under the self-employed tax regime?

It is his moral duty to explain the small number of his works.

Those who hinder the artistic expression of another Reality do not know what they are doing to themselves.

Art should have flourished freely through the artist’s hands.

And to close: a thought from Jean-Paul Floch inspired by his study and analysis of Leonardo da Vinci's painting: The Mona Lisa.

“Art is a Science transforming Sound and Light by harmonizing the vibratory slowing of these energy waves that this world of matter imposes, allowing our eyes and ears to inform our inner being of another Reality. The illusion of time and space that surrounds us in this world of matter disappears in the aura of a masterpiece. »

Biography update: January 2024