ÉRIC BÉRIDON

The F. Series, begun in 2005, retains the essence of Béridon’s sculptural approach: allowing nature and matter to maintain their creative power, while minimising its intervention as much as possible.
He pursues the same quest: to bring together body and mind, nature and civilisation in the creative process, rather than setting them against each other.
Fire, like rust, is a natural process of destruction. It also contains the paradox of life and death, darkness and light, black and colour.
The matter, with its random designs, comes from fire imprints collected directly from the ground, symbolizing the primal origin of the body. In contrast, the representation of reason — the result of a controlled human gesture — is limited to the addition of pigments. When the canvas is presented vertically, it alters the natural orientation of fire, shifting the viewer’s perception: we enter the material as thoughentering an imprint of ourselves.

« Is the mind a spiritual principle that can be detached from the body, if we are talking about the soul and approaching it from a religious perspective, or is it an empirical and elitist thinking principle of animals, if we consider it from a scientific perspective? » In the pieces of the series F. from 2010, this research is shown by an in-depth work, with multiple layers as a universe in a thousand leaves. The body and the mind do not lie on the same level, this is the eye by observing that gathers them together as an entity. Those artworks are neither paintings nor sculptures, nor two dimensions or three dimensions, but the result of another approach, where the notion of space and the notion of time are different.  Unlike other existing plastic forms, whose subject lies on the surface and on which the look just types, it is no longer to bring out things from inside to outside, but to enter the form to open other dimensions.  Here, the object does not interrupt the look. The interior becomes the subject of the approach. 

« Is it the matter that creates the mind or the spirit that permeates the matter? The question remains at the center of the artist’s approach. To approach it, he had to tend towards a work, not additive, but subtractive, purging my gesture. The pieces of the series F. since 2012 reflect a work of contrasts:
-Form contrast between matter ( imprint of fire remains- the body) and conceptual work (intersecting lines – the spirit).
-Texture contrast between asperity of the mater and smooth appearance of the geometric pieces.
– Tonality contrast between black charcoal and white geometric shapes.
– Brightness contrast between elements in dark and those in light.
Light is a medium in its own right, playing a role in the works of the F Series, embodying the link between the material and the spiritual, the instinctive and the cognitive. It never appears directly to the eye, but is situated “between” the elements, creating a vibration like an energy specific to the painting.