Vincent Beaurin: The Fun of the Past, 2006

“Looking is predatory, it lies; it deceives. Things lend themselves to the eye and are what they present themselves to be. The pertinence of art is not in how a thing conforms to the eye but in the resolution of the contra- dictions and confusions, which the act of looking 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, motionless. Their often composite names, allowing one to designate them, are borrowed from various mythologies and from the most common language of today. Those with animal forms are mostly devoid of orifices and external organs. Their bodies often have only one limb. Designed to perform, their postures nevertheless 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 imag- es suddenly move out of line, causing a fracture in this flat screen. I can then catch a glimpse of what is behind, It’s black, not the hue by which an object signals itself, but the black of a chasm. lf 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 veer towards images, without the permeability of the surface being altered or its relation to the abyss being broken. These works attract the way 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.”
Vincent Beaurin