Functional sculpture, 2025

Both a sculpture and a seat, this artwork reflects Philippe Cramer’s interest in art for public spaces. Its shape, reminiscent of a Möbius strip, appears deceptively simple despite the technical complexity of the production. The artist has sculpted an ancient mass of rock, frozen for millennia, and transformed it into a piece of art, as if twisted by a supernatural force.

The title, meaning “forever and ever” in Latin, evokes the concept of eternity. The sculpted loop of the seat symbolizes the ever-repeating cycle of life into death and death into life. The surface facing the sky rotates to become the surface facing the ground, and vice versa, inspired by Egyptian cosmogony, which describes an eternal cycle in which the sun dies at dusk only to be reborn every morning. Philippe Cramer turns his sculpture into a Memento Mori — a universal and timeless object of meditation and reflection.

The artist invites the public to engage with the piece by sitting on the sculpture, embracing the curve of the loop, and enjoying a face-to-face encounter in the spirit of a “conversation” seat — a furniture style from the Second Empire, known to English speakers as a “love seat”.

Philippe Cramer’s sculpture Aeternus Eternus II (left twist) is now part of the permanent collections of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAMC), the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Arts in Rome, thanks to the financial support of the Geneva-based Haute Horology F.P.Journe Manufacture.

The piece has been integrated into the museum’s new layout, called GNAMC Masterpieces, initiated by Director Renata Cristina Mazzantini.