top of page

La fabrique des courants d’air

2014, installation, fans, skateboard elements, rope, lead, pulleys, dimensions variable

(Production Eternal Network)

(documentary video of the installation)

​

"As magic insidiously crosses the whole of Jean-Baptiste Caron's work, he gives in here to show a special effect which itself becomes the artistic object: since the breaths generated by the fans fail to create a real current of air, the artist uses the mechanism that rotates them to simulate the beating of windows. Fans, leaves, wires, weights, skateboard wheels, everything kicks in and deploys the choreography of an empirical mechanism that intends to compete with the "real" wind coming from outside. It's a whole poetic-absurd staging of the void which, despite the heavy strings, leaves us contemplative." Eric Foucault

​

​

JEAN-BAPTISTE CARON

​

CV

TEXTS

PORTFOLIO (PDF)

E-SHOP

 

Jean-Baptiste Caron’s works often provide us an ambivalent feeling. Each time the slightest disturbances feed our imagination. We find ourselves evolving in a suspended universe, without even realizing it. This shift comes from games with gravity, immateriality, optics… For instance, concrete balls are trapped in alveoli of transparent spheres; we exhale a little of ourselves without being caught by the mirrors; matter was dug without having been pierced… If the idea of passage is present, it is more a question of evoking circulations here. As we stumble upon the proposed accesses, our gaze and our mind bifurcate to browse the movements intercepted by various matters. By capturing these various movements (suspended, deviated, implied, printed, fixed, etc.) the artist gives us different states to see whether it is about transformation, gravity, balance/imbalance, hardly anything. He gives us the Time to see. We find ourselves experiencing the time that is, that passes or that has passed. Some works do not give any clue as to the feasibility of their condition and then, conversely in others, one can, inferencing, visualize the necessary gestures to produce the form. This time favourable to the realization of the work is here stopped then fixed to the point of impregnating the work of art. Sometimes we are also given to see the time stretching. It is thus dissected down to the smallest details. This is how seconds become millennia, how a sphere never takes flight, how materials liquefy, soften without going on to the next stage. A coring of time unfolds before our eyes. We also have suspended time to the limit of the flickering, making us apprehend the slightest finger snap that can bring everything back in the course of time. If this was the case, falls would have to be considered. While Sisyphus was condemned to eternally roll a rock on a hill which – before reaching the top – goes down each time, Jean-Baptiste Caron suspends for a moment this infernal loop. Leaving us with the fear of a fall or a flight that could happen at any moment. At other times, the artist gives us a brief possibility to see his work in its wholeness. We’re running out of time. We have no proposals to stop it. The work is revealed in an ephemeral as impalpable breath. More recently we discover the shift of time. We can see or hear again what happened right here, right where we are. We are also told that our presence is not without consequences in the scheme of things. The more Jean-Baptiste Caron gives us to see, the more the rules of logic seem to fade away, letting us believe in the mere action of magic. Delete to reveal what is given to see for the best. The artist acts less in a demiurgical gesture than in a revealing act. Finally, he happens to be a Usher offering the viewer the possibility to become active. A revealing usher not without a touch of humour as he plays with Time. He disrupts it, disturbs us to the point where we wonder what is illusion and what is not.

​

Leïla Simon.

Mécanique du vivant

2012, concrete, polystyrene, pvc, video, Ø40cm

(video linked to the work)

 

The spherical volume of Mechanics of the living does not have the behavior that one expects. Instead of rolling in a straight line, it takes an unexpected trajectory which ends in a spiral. The spiral, one of the most common forms in nature, also symbolizes for the artist the conquest of his own center of gravity. Where is the balance point, the center of inertia? The curve obtained, close to a Fibonacci spiral, also called gold spiral, is virtually limitless. Nathalie Desmet

​

Spectre

2018, video, 15′, 
LCD screen, raspberry-pi, neons, 47x30cm


The extent of a light spectrum captured in an empty exhibition hall is replayed on video. The color variations and the alternations of white presented through this device evoke phenomena invisible to
the naked eye. Théo-Mario Coppola

​

61.jpg

Il est plus facile de faire tomber une pierre que de la lancer en l’air

(It's easier to drop a stone than toss it in the air)

2007, video, 3’12

​

This work is one of the first videos that Jean-Baptiste made at the start of his visual art studies. We can detect the premises of certain issues that are at stake in his work and that he has worked to develop since.
Gravity is an integral part of the themes inherent in Jean-Baptiste Caron's work, the question of the fall as well as that of the ascent. He likes to play with our perceptions, to question our relationship with the senses. It sows disorder in the breasts of our certainties, upsets our spatio-temporal landmarks. Through this work, it is a question of liberating ourselves from our ordinary, of liberating ourselves from this force which is constantly exerted on us and conditions our lives, until the construction of reality, its questioning, its absence .

​

bottom of page