Una mattina
mi son svegliato — the cold
had made the night
Le porteur de glace is a large oil painting. A man in sandals carries an enormous block of ice on his back, bent under the load, against a background of ochre and grey.
Before refrigeration, ice was cut and carried by hand. Sébastien Bonin paints this forgotten trade as a gesture of the past, a know-how that survives through the image: the body disappears behind the load and becomes the gesture itself.