Luc Cobourne Art

Manifesto of the Echoed Self

I create because the world keeps leaving traces of itself—reflections in windows, shadows stretching across concrete, echoes bouncing off walls—and I feel compelled to chase them. My practice begins in these in‑between spaces, the areas where things aren’t quite themselves: where light becomes distortion, where silence becomes vibration, where identity flickers like a silhouette. I believe art lives in these liminal zones, where certainty collapses and imagination steps in.

Reflections fascinate me because they reveal and disguise in the same instant. A mirror offers truth but only from a certain angle. A puddle gives you the sky, but only if you choose to look down. I work with mirrored surfaces, glass fragments, and reflective plastics not to show people themselves, but to fracture the idea of a single, stable perspective. Every reflection is a remix—of the viewer, the space, the moment—and so is every artwork.

Shadows are the reflections’ silent partners. They are honest in ways light isn’t. A shadow doesn’t lie about form, only scale. In my installations, shadows become active participants—shifting as viewers move, turning their bodies into co-creators. I want people to feel the weight of their presence, to understand that their existence bends the world around them even in simple, quiet ways.

Sound is my third dimension. Not music, but sound—the hums, pulses, and resonances that shape how we inhabit space. I work with recorded footsteps, whispered text, vibrating surfaces, and low-frequency tones that can be felt more than heard. Sound becomes a sculptural material, one that wraps around bodies and alters how they perceive the objects and shadows around them. When sound interacts with light and form, something close to storytelling emerges—an atmosphere that doesn’t need characters or plot.

Sculpture and installation are my way of grounding the ephemeral. I build structures from found materials, wood, metal, and, proudly, LEGO. LEGO is more than a childhood artifact for me—it’s a philosophy. A system of infinite rebuilds. A reminder that creation doesn’t need to be permanent to be meaningful. With LEGO, I construct hybrid forms—half toy, half architecture—that celebrate imagination while resisting the idea that art must be serious to be significant.

And running underneath all of this, like vibrant ink through paper, are the heroes of DC and Marvel. Not as corporate icons or movie stars, but as mythologies: stories of transformation, dual identities, power, vulnerability, and the tension between who we are and who we pretend to be. My installations borrow their energy—the dramatic lighting, the sense of scale, the idea that ordinary people cast extraordinary shadows. I’m interested in the sculptural body as a heroic form, the symbolic potential of capes, masks, and modular armor. These universes taught me that aesthetics can tell moral stories—and that even broken worlds can be rebuilt.

My manifesto is simple: Art should reshape the spaces it occupies and the people who occupy those spaces. It should reflect, distort, echo, and reassemble the world until new possibilities appear. I create to map these possibilities—one shadow, one sound, one brick at a time.