French artist enters new home for the week, inside a stone

French artist Abraham Poincheval, who previously spent two weeks inside a bear sculpture, embarked on his latest feat on Wednesday, February 22nd -- living inside a block of stone for a week.

Poincheval will live in a body-shaped slot carved out from a limestone rock from February 22 to March 1, at Paris' Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum.

He will eat stewed fruit, soups and purees inside the stone block which is equipped with an air vent as well as personal items such as a log book.

The artist told journalists, who flocked to the contemporary art museum to view his entry into the stone, that the best way to understand objects was not from a distance but by entering them.

"I say to myself, hold on, what is this object really? And you ask yourself the question and say to yourself : 'well hold on, instead of distancing yourself and removing oneself from it, let's go inside and see what is really happening,'" Poincheval told reporters.

He added that he sees the projects as a type of inner exploration and a way of reaching a type of alternative freedom.

The stone project sparked varying reactions from audience members.

"It is rather extraordinary. We are asking ourselves : what he will do for a week? How he will live? We arrived just as he went in this work of art, and I hope we will be able to follow, on the internet at least, how it will evolve," Maylis Boxberger, a Parisian resident visiting the museum with her son Charles, told Reuters TV.

"I find that it is nonsense and that people are rather naive, as I was too. This is what, I'm looking for the right word, it is a 'happening', there you go, that is how I see it. I think that I have nothing else to tell you, for me, in any case, there is no art present there," Parisian Francine Nicolas said.

The artist is no stranger to living inside enclosed spaces. Poincheval spent 13 days living inside a hollowed-out bear sculpture in 2014, eating worms and beetles to mirror a bear's diet.