In my work I use mostly what may be called classical materials (stone, wood, clay, bronze, metal. etc.) because these are almost abstract and amorphous. Their identity resides mainly in their structure (except for metal). This allows me to model them the way I want while respecting their character.



I want to realize what I call "inhabited forms"--forms that contain energy, as if they could breathe and live by themselves. This is a personal attitude of mine, both classical and modern, as I don't wish to be part of any official fashion or artistic movement.



My subjects have no clear borders. They are connected to each other. My basic themes: nature; landscapes that accommodate and oppose human creation; an architecture of the "spirit"; skeletons and enveloping skin; the evocation of a feeling or a sound or a privileged location; landscapes with flat areas and mountains, rough or modelled, with erosion that is natural or artificial, accomplished by nature or man.



I am lately working on a series of variations on a theme. In ''Between Three Points'' () I explored the idea of reading a sculpture in time, as in a work of music. The work is built from three pieces that... tell the story of the creation of a form in three chapters: (1) the beginning, birth, or underground level, (2) the initiation, or earth ground level, and (3) the rebirth or result tending toward the sky. The form is not completely free to grow as it will, but is constrained and guided by internal tectonic pressures and external atmospheric pressures. The sculpture can be read in two directions at the same time: horizontally between the three parts and vertically between the ground and the sky....



In ''Between Earth and Sky'' () the idea is the same but expressed more in the vertical direction. We have axels between two points, places where passage can take place. The axels stand as almost human figures between the matter and spirit, between the underground (hell) and the sky....



The surface of my forms is worked in the same way: smooth areas in opposition to rough ones and simple, almost geometrical, forms facing multifaceted, chaotic accumulations of shapes. Simplicity strikes me as dangerous. It's wrong to try to understand things by eliminating the details instead of understanding the whole in its complexity. I think the details create the whole.〔2. Ariel Moscovici. Artistic statement. Supplied by the sculptor to Alton Thompson, March 2008.〕

The works are not a reflection of geometrical forms in a timeless space. They have a temporal dimension relating not to history or mythology but to a world that existed before both; even so, this world forms the essence of both history and myth. This is a world constantly engaged in struggle. The protagonists in the conflict, humanity and nature, operate in a world of opposites: smooth and rough, gloss and matte, geometrical and irregular, concave and convex, straight and curved, round and square, polished and rough, full and empty, imprint and excrescence, horizontal and vertical, mass and surface. For Moscovici this conjunction of opposites is characteristic of our species' relationship with nature. Though we are ourselves part of nature, we exert our will over matter and impose our own vision, eventually transforming nature to reflect our innermost being.



Like Rimbaud seeking to write the silences, seize the inexpressible, and freeze whirlwinds, Moscovici seeks to translate into images the fundamental rhythms of existence and the mysteries of nature....



Moscovici displays a profound humanism whose expression is anything but extravagant. The means are simple. The eye and the spirit are called inward. ... Here one is facing an uninhabited habitat, a dwelling lacking practical purpose. Only the eye of the beholder will enter and find refuge and, in solitude, dream of habitation.〔Printed catalogue, ''Ariel Moscovici Sculptures'', Chateau Le Puget Art Gallery, Alzonne 11170. France, 2007
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''(Translation: Robert Drew, Jacques Carrio, Alton Thompson)''