Increasingly, the world of Vincent Beaurin sets out a utopian landscape inhabited by chimera. However, these strange figures do not borrow the fantastic from classical imagery (anthropomorphic amalgamations ? human torso on animal hindquarters and paws ? or composites of various animals); here, the beings are more ambiguous than this and can be a cross of any living body (animal, vegetable, mineral). They are reduced to a form which frees perception from precise recognition, so as to liberate the feeling from the conception.

The work presented in the exhibition belongs to this new category of chimera (at first glance it is a bowl and an antler) which owe more to the process of reduction than of collage.
While the sculpture is perfectly carved, its sand casing blunts the precision of the drawn lines and renders the work?s mass uncertain. Like atoms, the grains of sand appear to respond to a force of attraction and form, by condensation, a sculpture which looks as if it is about to disintegrate, as if its strength was waning. A seemingly fragile and ephemeral work, which seems to seize hold of a form as much as a time of infinitesimal duration. This world of forms reduced only to how they are perceived (uncoupled from their conception), this world of appearances is like a reflection, free of any signification, of our reality, a world where essence and existence are one and the same thing.
And actually it is a reflection which the artist seems to have caught as a
volume, or rather, if that were possible, the imprint of a reflected form; a reindeer drinking, its muzzle dipping lightly into the water while its antlers, in the background, are clearly reflected. A fragile and delicate moment which risks being shattered at the slightest noise, at the slightest touch of anxiety. An interpretation which is just as precarious and which will soon unravel before the object that is intentionally a-signifying.

Creuset
Gilles Drouault

From the catalogue of the exhibition Dérive.
Curator Mathieu Mercier, Fondation d?entreprise Ricard, 2007, Paris.

Nature, I use the word for its convenience. Other terms such as world, universe, creation, things would do just as well.  
Nature issues no value judgment or moral judgment even though it carries them all. It is the casserole of all stews, the laboratory of all experiences. Its curiosity  knows no limits and its instincts are multiple. There is no way out of this violent party. Everything is summoned to it, everything is invited in, from the tiniest, isolated particle to the master of ceremonies whose bragging are not always in the name of entertainment. Perhaps the crucible is a sign of this event - a vat with three roots made from antlers. It may have belonged to an ancient baptismal font, even if the rites for which it was used cannot be articulated in this place.

Fourteen reindeer antlers, (the number of the stations on the cross) were brought back to me from Siberia. I wanted them to be collected in the snow, from the permafrost even. I wanted them to be near fossils. When I unwrapped them I discovered with disgust and repulsion that bits of fur and skin were still stuck to pieces of skull that had been hacked off or sawn off. I even found an ear among all this horror. I had to boil the hide of these beasts to clean the antlers.  The acrid cooking smells made me vomit several times.

Later, I made my piece. I often knocked against these antlers. Each time, I was annoyed, as if someone was hitting me for no reason. Doing it again and again made me think that it wasn?t just clumsiness. I felt that the animals whose solid remains were strewed over the floor of my studio were targeting me. Their aggression was nothing compared to that of my own industry and the horrific terror to which it had subjected them. Something was now restraining them from which they demanded deliverance. Any animal put to death demands from its executioner an offering in return ? a kind of certificate of sacrifice, a safe-passage without which all peace is denied to them. This is an obligation which no-one can duck without contracting a debt weighing on all those who are still alive and which feeds an avenging egregore. I felt bound to repair, to celebrate, for myself as artist, beyond their death, a life that still went on.

Creuset
Vincent Beaurin
July 2007

The gaze is predatory, it misrepresents; it deceives.
Things lend themselves to the gaze while remaining that which they present themselves as.
The pertinence of art lies not in how a thing conforms to the gaze but in the resolution of the contradictions and confusions which the gaze generates.

I am a sculptor. I create devices to bring about this sort of reconciliation.
I combine powdery materials such as polystyrene, sand, mica with paradoxical precision. I play games with notions of scale, mass and origins. I refer to abstract figures and summon forth fabulous beings. These beings break through the raw whiteness of the walls and hold themselves in, quite still. Their names, - often compound names- which enable designation, are borrowed from various mythologies and from the most common language of today. Those with animal forms are mostly devoid of orifices or external organs. Their bodies often have only one limb.. As performers, their postures show evidence of various afflictions. Other pieces might include one or several stones or fragments of organic matter.

I physically experience the world as being entirely made of powdery substances. When I open my eyes, I see a carpet of superimposed images, which merge and flatten out. Sometimes, the images suddenly move out of line, provoking this flat screen to rupture. I can then catch a glimpse of what is behind. It's black, not in the sense of the hue which may colour an object, but more the black of a pit with no light, of the void. If the works I produce have analogies with this darkness, it is as much through the porosity of the material and the absence of reflection as through the colour. A work might for example sparkle with the flakes of mica that cover it, and thus might approach images, without the permeability of the surface being altered or its relation to the abyss being ruptured.

These works attract as the void attracts. They disturb any sense of equilibrium with the suddenness of accident and absorb the din around them through capillary action. They can be unsettling. Yet they are calming. The sites reverberate with the electric hum from the neon lighting.

Vincent Beaurin
2007