Nicolas Beaud
Visiblement Gris, Impermanence…
Photos: Philippe Rolle (exc. black and white image: Nadine Monod).
Seemingly grey…
…Nicolas Beaud begins with successive stratifications, the way an oriental artisan applies layers of lacquer. However, the difference with Beaud’s work is that the process remains visible throughout…
…One usually makes a slow progression towards a grey, unpredictable to start with, but whose steps to realisation can be observed, as a mathematical series focuses insensibly and inevitably towards its own end…
…Nicolas Beaud doesn’t just limit himself to painting. He also aims to achieve stratifications by superimposing films of coloured acetate, producing, with the least effort, the same “greying” effect familiar to photographers. Here, as with his paintings, Beaud makes sure that the filters don’t exactly superimpose, allowing one to discover at the composition’s edges, a number of intermediate combinations which reveal, in their own way, the story of the making of the work…
…In this way Nicolas Beaud’s piece resolves, with an elegance whose simplicity amazes, a dialectical opposition with an ontological feature which stands at the heart of the definition of any art work of our time. It answers – simultaneously or successively, according to the spectator’s mood – the two main questions of contemporary art: what and how.
Louis Doucet
From “Subjectiles 1”, Le Manuscrit editions, 2007
Translation: Donnacha Woods
Visiblement Gris, Impermanence…
The first time I used coloured films in a large space, I wanted to give the spectator room to amble, observing the materials undulations, reflections and lights, while questioning the principles of my work. As Oscar Wilde wrote in his preface to “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” in 1890: “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”
Nicolas Beaud
Previous Work
“Visiblement Gris - Cercle”, 2011
3x32x40cm, 4 superimposed colour filters
“Visiblement Gris XIII”, 2010
114x146cm, acrylic on canvas
“Visiblement Gris”, c.140cm x 3m
3 superimposed colour filters
Nicolas Beaud
Born 1970. Swiss and French nationality.
E-mail
nicolas.beaud@gmail.com
Web
http://nicolas.beaud.free.fr/
Exhibitions
2012
Visiblement Gris, Impermanence…
, residency and exhibition, Château de Sacy, Oise, France
2011
Petits Papiers
(group), galerie du Haut-Pavé, Paris
20 artistes les pieds dans l’eau… à Locquirec
(group), galerie Réjane Louin, Locquirec
2010
Group exhibition in Saint-Ouen - recent paintings and installation project
2009
Visiblement Gris II
(solo), Point Ephémère Paris, as part of the
les Plans d’Avril festival
2008
de Rendez-vous en Rendez-vous 2008
(group), galerie du Haut-Pavé, Paris
Novembre à Vitry 2008
(group)
Coulures - Couches
, Galerie SPEERSTA Bursins, Geneva
2007
de Rendez-vous en Rendez-vous 2007
(group), galerie du Haut-Pavé, Paris
Résonance 2007
, installation project at the Château de Montvillargenne in Chantilly-Gouvieux. 8-day residence.
2006
Visiblement Gris
(solo), galerie du Haut-Pavé, Paris
Espaces fictifs
as part of the
Eté des arts en Auxois Morvan international art festival (installation project at the Château de Chevigny)
2005
Installations, “In Situ” dans le Domaine de Soucy
, commissioned by the Communauté de Communes du Pays de Limours
2003-2004
Artists’ residency at Bligny Hospital, 2 week-ends + exhibition (Sep 2003 to Jan 2004)
2002
Le temps du regard
, N. Beaud and JC. Brebion, Entrepôt Privé, Nantes
1999-2000
Group exhibition at the Swiss Embassy in Paris,
Passage…
- Gaudin, Gelzer, Soizic, Beaud. Curator: R. Tisserand.
Career
2008
Invited artist for the second semester of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, as part of the painting studies course
2003
Obtained Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique (DNSEP) with distinction (President of the Jury: Anne Tronche, with Valérie Mréjen, Pierre Giquel and Bernard Marcadé)
Since 2001
Lighting technician, Opéra National de Paris Bastille
2001
Obtained Diplôme National d’Arts Plastiques (DNAP)
2000
Member of VISARTE, Swiss society of visual artists
1999
Accepted into Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC)
1998
Académie d’art Paris-Italie
1997
Moved to Paris
1992-1997
Development Engineer, Crissier, Switzerland
1991
Obtained Electrical Engineering Diploma, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
