Sébastien Preschoux – “TROPISME” – March, 10 > April, 9 2017.
The David Bloch Gallery is honored to present the fourth solo exhibition of Sébastien Preschoux in Marrakech.
The artist present a series of new works on wood as well as an installation in-situ.
The vernissage took place on Friday, March 10 in the presence of the artist.
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What is it that inspires an artist to create tirelessly? What pushes them to question themselves and their work, both on a technical and an aesthetic level?
What is the genesis of that semi-unconscious sort of power that pushes an individual to act, react and head towards a certain direction? What would its tropism be like?
“The reward of the curious” affects Sébastien just like a creative tropism. His artistic precept incarnates the satisfying acquisition of knowledge and dexterity felt right after completing an artwork. That gratification of having pursued an idea, an emotion, one’s intuition till the end. The impatience triggered by the discovery of new possibilities, induced by exploring a new path of work. The vertigo tied to the extension of “unexplored” creative tracks.
It was this work foundation and reasoning on which Sébastien primed his production for his 4th solo exhibition at the David Bloch Gallery. Based only on the precept of “The reward of the curious”, Sébastien let his creative process flow on the entirety of the exhibited artworks.
Each piece was closely tied to the next, and “nurtured” it in a way. It was all highly reflective of the outcome of the exploratory and spontaneous stages.
The ensemble delivered an extremely rich and diverse exhibition, seeing as beyond the obvious simplicity (or the complexity, rather) of certain pieces, Sébastien succeeded to achieve the perfect balance between the form and the technique, inimitably displayed on large format artworks along with an installation.
Sébastien Preschoux – 1974 / Paris
Deeply touched by the optical art, but also by the values of the teaching of the Bauhaus lauding an instruction centred on the fundamental value of the manual labor, Sébastien created indefatigably more and more complex drawings being able to compete with what a machine could produce in a few moments.
By this approach he knew how to create a visual confusion at the spectator who can bring this last one to wonder about the origin (human or mechanical) of his works. But only while approaching the spectator will have been able to identify the stigmas of the passage of the human hand, the attitude which Sébastien names the reward of the curious.
His work does not limit itself to a production in 2 dimensions, but finds a correspondence in 3 dimensions by means of thread installations, often realized in natural environment, so offering him a perfect freedom both in term of size and variety. For it he works in association with the photographer Ludovic LE COUSTER, who works with argentic cameras.
“Watching Sébastien PRESCHOUX at work is to accept to oscillate between the serenity of an artwork allowing itself to be built without precipitation and the tension of an infinitely precise gesture, gracefully measured, drastically governed by a process of measurement and counting.
The work stretches in time, rhythmic by the repeated gesture of the handling of the rule then the compass. Without impatience, Sébastien PRESCHOUX unfolds the movement of drawing in time, allows material to unfold in space.
This manner, which one might think laborious to trace the line, to form the curve or to stretch the thread, is felt for the spectator attentive to the work being done, as an instant of appeasement. Repetition of delicate gestures, smoothly, the time of creation here resembles to a gentle litany to the gaze.
One could find astonishing the choice of this artist who rubbed the profession of graphic designer for a time, to return to the fundamentals: hand, body, physical commitment. To find it even more amazing to maintain the ambiguity of his practice by the motives he invokes and which in fact could easily be regarded as PAO images or photomontages.
For the artist, it is taking the risk of being labeled a maker by a lack of attention that the viewer would carry to the material or outdated by the adept of the machine.
In two dimensions, Sébastien Preschoux’s designs seem to be aminated with vibrations, attributable perhaps to imperfections inherent in the fallibility of the hand. However, the quality of the supports, the furrows of the ink dug by the tips, the lines of punches left by the compass are the physical markers that create the pattern, which is far removed from the flatness of a digital printing.
Three-dimensional, installations diffract light and find in the natural setting of their implementation an obvious case. Photographed by Ludovic Le Couster, these pieces of thread acquire an almost surreal aspect that tends to amalgamate the proofs with photomontages.
The border between art and crafts is moving and homology with digital rendering too troubling. A look without requirement will be deceptive. The endurance of the work of creation poses the condition sine qua none of a benevolent slowness in the visit, so that real is the encounter of the eye and the object. ”
Valérie NAM