Vincent Beaurin — Laurent Godin Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 12 → February 25, 2012

Since his exhibition in Paul Cézanne’s studio in Aix en Provence during summer 2010 and the simultaneous presentation of “Du prisme cézanien” (Fondation Ricard, Paris), colour has become one of the main developments in his works.

Vincent Beaurin creates his exhibitions as if they were landscapes.

Each piece of work is positioned in the space, in the same way as the many different places which compose a landscape. They attract and produce an effect that, due to its unusual quality, some have called aura. This radiance is more consistent with gravity and electromagnetic force. A place can be distinctive in such a way as to stand out by its presence alone.

Under harsh light, Vincent Beaurin combines entropic atmospheric-coloured volumes, as if they were calcified, with a glorious goddess of ancient Egypt: Bastet.

While many artists have referred to the work of Eugène Chevreul Law of the Simultaneous Contrast of Colors ever since it was released in 1839 (Robert Delaunay used to sign the Simultaneous), Vincent Beaurin also freely refers to Goethe and his Theory of Colors published in 1810, and more specifically to the chapter on physiological colours, the ones that the eye produces after being stimulated by an image or by simple pressure on the eyelid.

“The blue of the sky reveals to us the fundamental law of colour.”

J.W Goethe, Theory of colours, 2 nd éd., Paris, Triades, 1980, page 59.

In other words, observation is the best source of inspiration !

“Colours have a shadow. This shadow contains them all, and the colours are active in it. Each colour turns into a moving spectrum. I play on reversals and commutations. At times the shadow is more significant than the visible colour. Likewise, the mass or inside of a statue is a chasm. We call a complex colour, those that can be made by a mixture of a part of the three main zones of the chromatic circle, toned down. This is to ignore what wells up in it. Often, a bright colour is on call, suspended at the centre of a depression enriched by alteration.”

V. Beaurin, Vincent Beaurin / Le spectre / Dans l’atelier de Cézanne, Paris, Skira Flammarion, 2010, page 9.

Using rudimentary resources such as polystyrene, resin, coloured sands, a scraper made by himself, and some blades, Vincent Beaurin produces radical, often hypnotic works which he always wants to be soothing.

His works can be seen in the collections of the Fnac, the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art contemporain, the Mudam in Luxembourg, the Atelier de Cézanne museum in Aix-en-Provence, and in the collection of Claude Berri.