Eric BAUDART
Baudart pays particular attention to objects and detritus from post-industrial urban life: mattress springs, the blades of an obsolete and worn-out fan, a pile of concert posters, or the mechanism of a children's toy. With a few simple gestures, such as applying color, a one-time deformation, or simply moving the object from its environment and integrating it into the artistic space, the sculptor reveals the aesthetic and poetic potential of these elements.
Excerpt from the text written for his exhibition “Ralentir le vent,” Le CREDAC, 2023.
Why is there something rather than nothing? A very mediocre student, artistic practice and tinkering quickly pushed aside the rigor of science and philosophy, which I found too tedious. I found myself in art school, where in the beautiful Belgian jumble that was my mind, Warhol, Agnès Martin, and especially the works and writings of the Myth makers coexisted. My work already questioned the reality of the world, its physicality, and/or its mental representation. It is here, in this aspect of my sensitive relationship to the world, that something happens. But this “physical thing” is nothing more than the space that stimulates me. And because it is art that interests me, I can say without trembling that my work has little to do with this story of physics.
There are few things: space, life, death, my deaf persistence. My work is about being attentive, alert. It boils down to essentially bringing together and optimizing the conditions favorable to the emergence of a form, an idea. In this respect, managing the everyday and time is the most important thing. A detailed description of this daily life would be of no help to you: getting up, getting dressed, watching television, reading, sleeping, wandering, and above all, doing nothing. In a sense, I wait for things to fall from the sky. The exercise consists of not missing these things, much like Richard Serra, who in his video “Hand Catching Lead,” tries with his hand to catch the lead sheets that fall at regular intervals.
https://galeriegaillard.com/artists/10768-eric-baudart/biography/
