Elena Paroucheva

extract from press

Almost etheral constructions

Elena, I applaud your efforts to transform the hideous industrial structures that stride across our landscapes, turning them into decorative, almost ethereal constructions. Wonderfully imaginative work. Your energy and productivity are most impressive.

Professor Arnold Berleant, Long Island University, USA

CIGRE Brings the World, and Art, to France

CIGRE (Conseil International des Grands Réseaux Electriques or the International Council on Large Electric Systems) is a permanent international, non-government, not-for-profit association founded in France in 1921. These days, it’s one of the largest electric organizations in the world with members in over 80 countries.

Thousands of those members gathered in Paris Aug. 25-29 for CIGRE’s biennial conference and technical exposition.

In-depth discussions about transmission abounded, of course, at CIGRE, but meetings and a floor full of technical exhibitors didn’t represent all CIGRE had to offer. They also featured a companion art exhibit, “Networks into Artworks,” by Elena Paroucheva.

Her projects aim at emphasizing power networks rather than hiding them. The small gallery in conjunction with CIGRE’s Session 42 was but a taste of Paroucheva’s electricity-themed art.

Between the sessions, the floor and the colorful gallery of Paroucheva’s pieces, CIGRE Session 42 stimulated the intellectual, business and creative senses.

Kathleen DAVIS, senior editor, « T§D » USA

Networks into Artworks

The men have sowed in their path man made constructions but unwanted – Pylons, lighting poles, antennas, bridges, wind turbines, towers. My artistic approach in the environment is inspired by the visible and the invisible (the pylon, energy carrier, is visible, but the energy that goes through the cables is invisible, the antennas are visible, but radio waves are invisible.
From this inspiration, I chose the name of "High Tension" for my sculptures and my installations and “Electric Art” to my artistic path. In the first stage of creation, I must forget that the buildings are metal "giants" and not think about the technical, climatic, electrical, mechanical constraints… giving free rein to the imagination.

Elena Paroucheva, INDIA POWER Magazine, INDIA

European Heritage Days

The Tourist Office of Amnéville joins European Heritage Days in organizing a particularly original tour entitled “The high fashion under high voltage”…

« Républicain Lorraine » newspaper

Four years after their opening in the free time area of Amnéville (Moselle, France), the artworks carried by the 220,000-volt line Amnéville - Montois, invite each other in "European Heritage Days" ...

« La Dépêche » newspaper

Art, Energy and Environment

It happened something similar to the case of Eiffel Tower, the main goal of origin is the wireless and radio signals (and, today, television, laser and other signals) a technological solution that is aesthetic and cultural symbol of the new technological era and the city of Paris.
The four pillars of power transmission Amnéville are a great artistic metamorphosis. They became symbols of the health of the city, and more than that, the greatest monument to our technological achievements of the past century.
A historic solution example, unique role in the urban environment of the structures of power systems.

Supply systems and energy transfer over long distances are the source of inspiration and artistic imagination of Elena Paroucheva using the latest technology and materials to create his works.
It is not surprising that his sculptures Paroucheva innovative Elena meddling in the history of art and electricity.

Journal « HEP Vjesnik » CROATIA

Four towers dressed up in lighting

Bulgarian visual artist, Elena Paroucheva signed her monumental work which takes its inspiration from the local culture. Its symbol marries the artwork with the history of steel, the crucible of the industrial Lorraine. It also celebrates the reunion between providential water and well-being, a source of rejuvenation for the new Amnéville…
Elena composed reality by playing on the transparency, colour, and fluidity. And her interpretation of elegance confer these heavy carcasses, an incredible lightness. Suddenly, the metamorphose springs into the imaginary land, four imaginary creatures enrobed in light, working together to illuminate the horizon like raining stars.

Philippe BOSSUS "TERRAIN"

A high-voltage artist

Elena's artwork "Source” is a unique work in France. The High Voltage Sculptures metamorphose into dreamy creatures dressed in illuminated gowns.

Virginie DANIEL – journaliste

Networks into Artworks

The projects of the artist Elena Paroucheva aim at emphasizing the overhead line supports of energy distribution. Instead of trying to « camouflage » them in the landscape, she transforms them into works of art.
She has been working since 2000 with city halls, private and public institutions and companies involved in the Environment and has realised some monumental and astonishing projects.

These projects are about support of network, pylons of:
- Low, medium and high voltage power lines
- Renewable energy windmills
- Antennas - relaying mobile
- Lighting …

Her continuous research has led her to develop the works of art in two different ways:
Art Installations: This solution treats the transformation of existing building in the environment. They are investigated according to reception area and allow the modification of the visual aspect of the infrastructure into artistic works.

Sculptures: This way explores new forms for pylons to be implanted in the landscape, urban and rural areas. Sculptures use "symbolically" the same modules of metallic construction for the realization of « pylons - sculptures », « antennas - sculptures », « wind energy - sculptures ».

"ELECTRA" Edition CIGRE

The electric fairy - Art in the street

A remarkable work, an out of the ordinary approach: to bring elegance and lightness to imposing metal carcasses.

The artist’s imagination permitted Ameneville’s hill to become the runway where the immobile giants gave their fashion show.
Here the notion of conserving the patrimonial heritage is central. Badly perceived by the public, but a symbol of our times, crowning the steel and concrete, these pylons are kept but transformed to keep a trace and memory.
They are completely transformed into beautiful women dressed in illuminated gowns while their siblings on a medium term basis will disappear from the French territory.
Symbols of water, energy, steel.
The pylons become the heart of a monumental sculpture.
A nice surprise that this unusual and seductive beautification of the patrimony, sometimes, and with reason, disparaged.

Fabien CORBINAUD, "SKY magazine"

Circle of ideas for the development of the free areas

The electricity pylons in artistic source

Who would have thought?
A high voltage electricity pylon can become a work of art. In any case, the bet attempted was succeeded at the tourist and spa center of Amnéville.

Visitors can discover four towers that symbolize a silhouette. "Source" is the name given to the work of art based on these pylons. Its creation is tantamount to the artist, Elena Paroucheva, whose project was selected by RTE (Electricity Transmission Network of France) The project has been accepted by the municipalities concerned - Amnéville, Hagondange and Marange-Silvange.

The artistic aspect is undeniable, a work of art which is modern and unique.

J.P.R. "Republican Lorraine"

Monumental and light

Elena Paroucheva’s sculptures are appealing, and at the same time monumental and airy, they play with grace and charm with the landscape.

Helena KELMACHTER, Curator - Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris

The triumph of Elena in the world wide art scene

The Bulgarian artist enchanted Europe with her art “High Tension”. She launches into a unique voice in art – to transform metallic constructions of high tension lings into artworks.
The pinnacle in her project is the "Source", the monumental installation done together with RTE, France...

Vislena Martceva, « Delnik » Newspaper

How to transform overhead energy supports into appealing, decorative and artistic monuments.

Revisited by the artist’s eye and mind, energy infrastructures may become attractive and aesthetic objects.
In my art work, I endeavour to find the link between art, energy and the environment. I would like to give an artistic touch to our industrial heritage.
My main idea is to transform the network supports into artworks, symbolically maintaining the basic modules while incorporating a sculptural art approach:
My work: “Sculptures of electric towers”
“Sculptures of antennas”
“Sculptures of windmills”

My artwork involves power network supports:

Low, medium and high voltage power lines
Renewable wind energy
Antennas – mobile phone, radio relays…
Lighting – highways, stadiums, public spaces etc.

Each one of these constructions modifies the landscape. My objective is to personalize them in harmony with their unique location, to magnify them and turn them into artistic landmarks of our time. Towers and antennas are no longer anonymous giants, but works of art carrying essential energy in harmony with man and nature.

ELECTRA, Edition CIGRE

When the electricity fairy sheds into an illuminated young ladies

What a challenge for an artist to meet face to face these four supports (electric towers) each weighing 6.8 tonnes and reaching a maximum height of 34 metres. To carry out her artistic work, Elena Paroucheva first conducted a thorough reflection on the city's history, to propose "a particular work for a particular city”.
"The source", the name given to the project, in this way entered into the history of art and electricity as a unique work in the French territory.

Delphine PAYAN, "Le Republicain Lorrain"

To the donors of light

To the donors and to the researchers of light, to the person who is in search of transformation, Elena's "elements " transpose trace of man in a moment of sharing to a vision of light and space.

What man has done, the artist transforms. Of these immobile giants, Elena was able to extract aesthetic and grace, giving them an identity and a history.

The light passes, it permits the existence of the work, the light makes the emptiness vibrate, the emptiness that gives existence to life. In a journey of colour between interlacing and cables, the light does cut outs, the image is created for every traveller that passes by accompanied by his imagination, his desire to discover.

Michel Arnault, « Art’Touch » President

The city in the energy transition

RTE replaces the trellised pylons with tubular towers over the past decade. The minimum congestion on the ground and invisibility in the landscape are sought after, pending a hypothetical funeral for the highest voltages. The fairy electricity remains, however, very present in everyday life: a source of light, heat, comfort in families; an auxiliary which is indispensable for multiple professional gestures. Even when energy is renewed, it is very often an electricity which is converted in order to become usable. An energy transition is necessary to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The electricity fairy will provide this.

How to translate this idea into a picture? Where to find a contemporary artistic work with a message similar to that of Raoul Dufy, which was produced in 1937 with "The Fairy Electricity" the largest picture in the world, today exhibited at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris , a room specifically dedicated for such a work?

While seeking the image of the cover of issue 104 in the journal “Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine”, entitled "The City in the energy transition," I met the people-pylons of Elena Paroucheva. Instead of trying in vain to blend into the landscape, the pylons become human, each one distinguishing itself from the other, conversing with each other, presenting like ornaments, light and joy. This work expresses the concern of an artist confronted with the possible disappearance of a founding element in our material civilization.

The experimentation that took place in Amnéville indicates another possible treatment of the connection between pylon-landscape: pylons located, invested by a singular artistic projects.

Anne QUERRIEN"Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine"

Immaterial Presence – Elena Paroucheva

Threadlike, the sculptures permit the gaze to casually cut up the spaces.
Lines and traits, they do not describe the matter but indicated what it could be.

One finds as much the purification of cathedrals as well as the electricity network, one conveying the strength of the idea and the other the megawatts of energy. Immaterial presence, but a unquestionable presence.
Finally the metaphor asserts itself with electronic circuit, higher than the neuronal personal network, and higher still the impalpable meshes that connect between all members of society.

If such of a sculptures brings to mind an acrobat, it’s because each connecting point of small metal rods is reminiscent of an acrobat, and then, all together they become an acrobat.

High-tension towers in works of art

By discovering the presentation of this work, at the beginning I was put off by the title. Despite the extreme brutality with which some of them are located, I like these towers, I have admired them since childhood. In their relative variety, they always say beautifully and triumphantly their function and the manner in which they accomplish this. These are objects that "speak truth", their triumphant side, In my opinion is the real reason for their massive rejection. Transforming these objects of great quality into a work of art? It is condemnation of obsolescence! Like a mine car loaded with flowers.
While reading, taking into account the fact that the technique does not wait for the artist to condemn these huge walkers all in lines, I find this experience full of interest. Elena Paroucheva makes visible what most of us did not see or did not want to see. She imagined with all the details an exemplary relationship with its trading partners. I have no doubt that this experience participating in an evolution of the gaze and it’s importance by one over the others. This process that functions here on a principle of recycling an object at the end of life could inspire collaborations around objects in the making.
On the purely artistic field, it is remarkable and symbolic that Elena Paroucheva found herself restrained to materialize her idea, to make additions to the existing and never ablation. I await with interest the next part of story.

Bruno Maillard "Public Design"

The big carcasses in dress of ball

It must be said that no one had not prepared to assume what we could do, these pylons while scrap formidable foodstuff for rust trap propellers and other objects ULMistes. Such huge perches for cables so small, just right to serve as a repository of clouds of birds on their long migratory journey. Of course the energy that flows along these cables allows me to warm up my morning coffee. But anyway! I would have preferred that the genius of man we find another way to make the move, this energy that we say vital. Yes! Shame on me to have both despised these witnesses to our industrious eras, these hideous skeletons of the fairy electricity.

Élèna Paroucheva and its facilities are living proof of the capacity of the human species to adapt to his soul things that his mind had little inventive the unfortunate idea to sow on its way and in our campaigns, when it is not to our own doors. Dress ball or rain money, dancer or flower, man or woman, mast Élèna are all "characters" arm which I have the uncontrollable desire to go through the fields, legs which I would like to climb go see everything up there what goes through their head, make me smallest yet to tickle the underside of the feet, and a laugh accomplice expect a whole big dreams… For me ever these large carcasses will be bare, and I would almost Élèna Paroucheva to make them indispensable to my walks, when I wished for a long time burying all electrical cables.

Quite simply, thank you, Elena.

Dominique Boucher "Major Art"

When pylons of high voltage get ready in a parade of haute couture

Elena adds his artist looking for dress coats doors giants 7 tonnes and 34m high. It puts his talents as an artist in the service of architecture:

She thought give added value to its huge pylons of high-voltage lines through their transformation. The giant sculptures for the eyes is an idea that can only please and will certainly grow over time.

Jean-Louis Benoit "Pressadom"

The high-voltage towers into artworks

Instead of supplying electricity to the city Amnéville Montois lines by the French company RTE decided in 2002 to highlight the 4 existing towers are transformed into works of art.
It is the artist Elena Paroucheva, originally the concept of integration of pylons in the environment, which made the design of 4 towers, in collaboration with RTE. The basic idea was to use the towers as body, and dress with a transparent dress through which we see the contours of the metal structure.
The dress is made with stainless steel wire covered by a membrane (50 mm) and the decorative strips (70 mm) long 3 to 6 m for the body.
Buitink Technology has made the 4 "dresses", also dealing steel structures and installation. As it was very difficult to move the steel cables, Buitink Technology has specially developed a system of control of voltage level suitable for the pylons.

Buitink Technology, Nederland

Menhirs, cathedrals and electric towers

Formerly, there were Amnéville-les-Thermes, Moselle, who spent four pylons in the middle of the site and thermal tourism. Since December 2003, occupy a place their four to rope up giant steel, dressed in long colorful dresses.

Elena Paroucheva, responsible for this transformation is very pleased: "We are so accustomed to these structures that we will see more. An artist looks at the world with a different eye. For me, the towers are major characters passing by.

A vision that she kept in a corner of his head until the reading in the press, an article announcing the demise of airlines for 2035. "For me it was a click. Although since then, in talking with technicians RTE, I learned that airlines would still be present for a long time. At the time, in 1998, so I started making models and drawings. "

Presenting his case with RTE, Elena holds the attention of executive manager of the electrical French grid. His sketches are sent to the regions. A few months later, the responsible leadership of the East contacted him to talk about the case of Amnéville-les-Thermes. This very common tourist site thermal known throughout Europe, has a very high voltage line sighted. Unable to bury this line was problematic. The artist proposes several ideas in the context of a competition for the development of this line. It is the installation "Source" is chosen, a device guy - steel cables wrapped ductwork colors, which drape the pylons. "Everything has been calculated with engineers TEN East, which have verified the wind, weight and tension cables, to ensure that this poses no problem at the pylon. In light by night, the guy have a life span equal to the pylon.

Elena Paroucheva, happy to have this project, sees a message to the public as to business leaders.

"The structures utilities may become attractive, pleasant, if they are reviewed by an artist. These are the marks of our time, as the menhirs or cathedrals that we appreciate or not. That is why I want to magnify what is for me a symbol of our time. "

Frédéric Tourneur "URBIS"