Nicolas Daubanes. I take on essential questions: life, death, the human condition and the social forms that shape them.
Nicolas Daubanes. I take on essential questions: life, death, the human condition and the social forms that shape them. In my recent work, speed, fragility, porosity and the ghostly appearance of images and materials convey the pressure of the past at the crossroads of what is to come. My work unfolds over time; it traces a path, a trajectory moving towards the pursuit of freedom, towards release from constraint. I try to experiment with intensity and rigour; I play with danger, mental, visual and physical, in order to strengthen creative energy and pass on its force. I am guided by my own history, by my own existential questions, and by a constant, subtle match between form and content. For example: silicone, the very material usually used to restore heritage buildings, once transposed, creates a new space that visually suggests the disappearance of the original wall and hints at a possible escape (Membranes series). In this way, moulting and skin enter my argument. Iron filings, used in the drawings, call to mind prison bars, but also the files that make escape possible. This fine material, dangerous to the eye, is deposited by magnetism, while the slightest breath can make the drawing vanish. What appears is fragile; it must be cared for, and one must know that everything is ephemeral. Concrete loaded with sugar, inspired by the futile gesture of the Resistance fighters during the Second World War, reinforces the fleeting, temporary character of the objects produced in my work. It is a matter of seeing before the fall, before the ruin: the vital impulse. Exhibition view, Nicolas Daubanes, Hexagone Photo © François Fernandez. Jeanne Berbinau Aubry. Urgens; present participle derived from the Latin “urgeo”: to press, push forward, drive on, attack vigorously, cling to, excite, pursue, tighten, load, overwhelm, torment, compress, support, persist. The works of Jeanne Berbinau Aubry question natural and mechanical phenomena. In her sculpture and installation practice, she diverts objects, transposing their initial state into sometimes paradoxical alternatives. The processes of fictionalisation in her works are long stages of macerating an idea, a piece of knowledge or a technique, drawing on a multidimensional apprehension of reality. Benjamin Laugier, extract Exhibition view, Jeanne Berbinau Aubry, Urgens Photo © François Fernandez.
