PASCAL BERTHOUD
I have a strange and familiar dream...
This is the first time in twenty years that Analix Forever presents sculpture. Very
specific sculpture though: no matter subtraction, no molding, but a compaction,
by welding, of stainless steel, to get us to these strange faces, to these
unidentified, Kafka-like creatures, our cousins from planet March, mental
insects, avatars.
As every time since the transformation, in 2011, of Analix Forever in a tiny
contemporary art studio, the invited artist takes over the space and transforms it,
inspired by the spatial constraints, and conceives a completely new work.
Berthoud conceives here not only an exhibition, but a complete installation that
takes over the floors, the window and the upper office level where it intermixes
with the traces of previous shows. This ability to integrate the spatial dimension
of the future installation since the very first creative steps in his own studio is
reminiscent of Pascal Berthoud's work in the public space, while the references
of the artist - of the art historian who he is as well - span from constructivism to
geometric abstraction, from geology to science-fiction, from Franz West
(Ecolalia, 2010) to Xavier Veilhan's shark. Pascal Berthoud is searching for novel
forms as a real modernist.
Pascal Berthoud, as a perfect Swiss, combines in his sculptures the formal
aspect, smooth and impeccable as it should be, together with a deep underlying
anxiety. Berthoud's sculptures and his drawings are both formally perfect and
uncanny. It is classical to state that the best drawings are those made by
sculptors and Berthoud's drawings definitively incorporate a tridimensional
space that engulfs us in them, and transcends matter, in particular in the most
recent big drawings, that move beyond sculpture. The French art critic, curator
and writer Richard Leydier does not hesitate to compare Berthoud's drawings
"though definitively of our time, to those of some of the most famous
predecessors, such as Nicolas Poussin, Francisco de Goya ou Max Beckmann."
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