SANS TITRE

I met Bastien Cosson at Palette Terre, an independent exhibition space that he founded in 2014. For several years, it was at his home, in the only room that could have served as his living room, that the Sunday afternoon, opening day, I strolled, discussed and spied on paintings but also drawings, photos, gestures and looks. Different personal proposals, a large or sometimes scattered audience attending over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine at this precise time when art is at work, always in exchange. Without wishing to assume the authority of a gallery owner or an exhibition curator, his invitations are a way of showing and acting on the artistic ecosystem that surrounds him, in a generosity of going back and forth and discussion that he also materializes with the production of paintings with several hands.

The canvas becomes the center of a reflection, both on the medium but also on the world of art and on the aspects, from the most conceptual to the most pragmatic, that being an artist presupposes today. Each context leads Bastien Cosson to develop a practice of displacement (geographic, semantic or valuable), a constant play between the public and private spheres, between the posture of the creator, the viewer and the actor of the art world. A transparent commitment, nourished by a permanent awareness of the social, political and cultural issues that currently surround us.

His latest proposals testify to this whether by the title La peinture comme posture, by the interwoven patterns of the painter (the palette) and his model (printed image of his partner who crosses his work) or during his last personal exhibition where he hosted a meeting to support striking postal workers.

Bastien Cosson uses the poster here to voluntarily link two exhibition projects. A discreet gesture, however, addressing the weight of the question of the author within plastic creation as well as a permanent reflection on the exhibition / visibility of the artist in the current proliferation of proposals.