“January 2023.
The wind is getting stronger. From the cliffs of Pointe du Grouin, facing the ocean, my gaze plunges below the darkened horizon. Below, the rock, the sea and the air boil. There, each element seems to become the other. In the white foam, the black rock becomes volatile, fleeting. Sheltered from our gaze, it softens its slopes for a long time. Imperturbable, the wave springs up, shatters. In every spray, everywhere, air intrudes, circulates, acts, transforms. Where does each environment begin and end?
Here, everything that has a name seems to reinvent its walls.
Facing the sea and the salty wind, I try to bear traces of these open worlds. ”
Notes by Yann Bagot at the Sémaphore de la Pointe du Grouin, Cancale.
In January 2023, Yann Bagot returned to stay at the Sémaphore de la Pointe du Grouin, in Cancale, at the invitation of the Department of Ille-et-Vilaine. Later, in July, invited by the Tara Ocean Foundation, the artist embarked in Stockholm (Sweden), aboard the schooner Tara, for a residency in the Baltic Sea, as part of the Tara Europa scientific expedition. From these two artistic residencies, Yann Bagot returned with new drawings, a selection of which is brought together at the Robet Dantec gallery for the exhibition “The sea, this other”.
We knew Yann Bagot’s penchant for uncomfortable conditions: the majority of his drawings are made outdoors, with his knees anchored to the ground, on the motif. The cursor went up a notch on the Breton coast last January, where winter storms brought a dark force to Yann Bagot’s drawings, an energy slammed on the fury of the elements, which contrasts with the previous series.
The salt used by the artist in his drawings, thrown on the paper, this time sparkles more intensely, the artist having deliberately chosen not to rinse his leaves as he did before.
New constraints during his residence aboard the schooner Tara, where Yann Bagot draws, standing with sea water, the maritime landscapes crossed during navigation, subject to swell and sea winds. This experience at sea is extended by a residency period at the Kristineberg oceanographic station, on the island of Skaftö in Sweden, invited by the EMBRC (European Marine Biological Resource Centre) as part of the BiOcean 5D program (Program sampling of aerosols, deep sediments and marine habitats from European coasts). In this context, he pursues experimental and poetic work on paper, in which he draws a parallel between drawing and seawater analysis samples taken by researchers.
Both more abstract and focused on the very essence of the act of drawing, this new series called “Sea samples” seems to show us the lowest common denominator between the trace of drawing and the origin of life on earth, between the marine microbiome and the precipitation of Indian ink on paper.
And thus to make us aware of their beauty and their primordial importance.
Biography
Born in 1983, Yann Bagot lives in the Fontainebleau region. He graduated from the Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2008. He develops drawing work around the question of landscape and its natural elements, mainly using water, Indian ink and salt .
Regularly invited to artistic residencies (François Schneider Foundation, Abri Mémoire de Uffholtz, Sémaphore de la Pointe du Grouin, SAFFCA in Brussels, Tara Océan Foundation), he has been selected several times for the Pierre David Weill Drawing Prize, from the Academy of Fine Arts, from which he received a mention in 2023. His drawings are present in several private and public collections.
At the same time, he is an active member of the Ensaders collective and has been involved for several years within the La Source Garouste association which campaigns for access to art as a factor of openness to the world and social progress.
