Totems in the Garrigue.
        from W.Volk im Juli 2001

  In his professional life Jürgen Paqué worked as an engineer on some space flight projects, so to speak was active with his abilities for the life in space, to a certain extent for the life beyond the earth. Now retired he has turned his interests  more to the things on earth. With a walk on the long cumbersome way to Santiago de Compostela shows he apparently loves the extremes and feels now rather connected with the earth.

   Therefore it is not surprising, that his physical unrest drives him away from home to the landscape and here to roam the hills and valleys of the Garrigue in the surroundings of Collorgues. He is attracted by the impression given by the Garrigue. Just because she presents herself quite aloof and rejecting. His sense for the contexts, from the detail to the whole, allows him to search for the means, to transform creatively the hidden impression of the Garrigue into visible form.

  Who walks longer time in the Garrigue and moves on stony goats and hunter paths, exposed to stiff and prickly plants, the soft aroma of herbs and the ever present sounds of hungry buzzing insects. Away from the "civilization", for those walking here, the Garrigue begins to breathe audible. The sensory impressions are mingled with the experience Garrigue, to an experience of archaic depth.

  Stones are it, which make the narrow unsteady goat paths difficult. These are the coarse unhewn stones, they lie around, like volcanic "fall out". Spatout over the centuries since the creation of Earth, which occupy him. These stones let him move away to leave the traces of human existence in this unspoilt desert we know as the Garrigue.

  He gives the individual stones a meaning, a higher existence, puts them on each other to partially risky compositions. Raises them to a figure, a symbol to surmount the gravity. Stones are become part of a figure, gets as a whole a higher symbolic content through our interpretation of the meaning.

   He does not shy away from making daring arrangements. His desire to experiment lets him make attempts to overcome the natural laws of the static.  By doing so he gives to heavy stones the impression of floating. It is the ancient battle of the people against laws of nature, that documents itself here.

  The result is a fortunate mixture of game and creativity. Stone figures which accompany the original, invisible deep sound of this primeval landscape. The figures appearing archaic and these compositions give the Garrigue a new quality. Now the Garrigue has born their own guards from rock, has its own totem.