Following a highly acclaimed exhibition last year, Yann Bagot is back with another exceptional body of work in the same vein. Invited for a residency by the French Institute Villa Saint-Louis in Senegal, the artist continues his quest to capture the essence of a place. There, he explored the transformations of the Senegal River and its interactions between land and water. He is exhibiting at the Robet-Dantec Gallery in Nantes through Saturday, October 19, alongside two other artists.

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Yann Bagot works directly on the floor, where he lays his paper support flat. Then he takes up the materials at hand, and by mixing ink, water, sand, and gum arabic, he connects in situ with the movements and physical elements surrounding him. “By capturing them, I seek to create a direct link with them,” the artist confides. “I experience a kind of incantation of the place.” By immersing himself so deeply in the soul of his subject, Yann Bagot achieves a remarkable result. His compositions beautifully reflect the undulations of watery horizons. By sculpting light with such vividness, Yann Bagot masterfully captures life.

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Senegal, Ardèche, Brazil

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Jean Baptiste Née is a painter and set designer. His work bears similarities to Yann Bagot’s approach, as he, too, works directly on the ground. Here, he was inspired by the Sentier des Lauzes trail in Ardèche, where the artist captures the traces and contours of the rocks. Using an original method, the artist lays lengths of fine fabric across the trail. He then coats them with ink, which seeps through the weave, thus reproducing the rock’s imprint. The textures and irregularities of the ground resonate like a telluric echo across the compositions. On large vertical canvases, multiple shades of black and white then form the sinuous lines of a path toward abstraction.

 

Brazilian artist Tomas Amorim, for his part, describes his work as lying between photography and sculpture. But relief is always the focus. The artist first casts crumpled pieces of paper in plaster or white cement. “This is how I create forms and reliefs on the surfaces,” he explains. In a second step, he applies a photosensitive emulsion to the work, or pigments if he wishes to color his compositions. Under the action of light, the highly textured paintings then reveal their flaws in a very pronounced way. Literally, a true work of depth.