Hadrien Bruaux

My work is speculation. I try to bring things beside themselves, to dislodge the codes, to build new evidence. I come from painting and my gaze is coloured by it. My work is imbued with questions inherited from this discipline and touches on the image in its literal and figurative sense. I question what the image is in its status as well as in its materiality, what we make of it but also what it makes of us. The image cannot avoid certain issues such as representation or perception. The first often prevents its autonomy and the second refers to discussions of the real and the true but, above all, brings us to the importance of the viewer. My research is like the man who broke a piece of chalk in two to try to understand more and was surprised to find himself facing two questions rather than one answer.

One of the stages of my work consists of collecting objects, images, and fragments of all kinds, often abandoned residues, whose choice does not respond to specific criteria but is of the order of the encounter. As they are, these objects have lost their original use. They then become raw material on which I intervene directly or indirectly in order to remodel it and reinscribe it in a meaningful structure. I see my gesture as a mise en abyme. Also, the intervention on each element is not uniform, but depends on the collection. It tends to give the element a different legibility, by distancing it from its practical use; its plasticity can also be revealed when it is deconstructed, broken or partially present. Heidegger, by affirming that things disappear in their use, insinuates that they refuse to be used and become things again. Thus, the broken tool will only reveal itself by freeing itself from its functional relationship. When I discover an object or a fragment, it is through this shift that it appears to me.
Through these chosen elements, I try to create new narratives, moving narratives. The objects are not meant to evoke the past but to conjugate time. The introduction of a shift in the established and familiar codes intrinsic to the object provokes a strangeness in the viewer who tries to grasp it. This playful relationship to the established code is intended to leave the doubt always in suspense. The desire to communicate a character of otherness to the object presented, paradoxically, makes things more visible. I therefore seek first and foremost to offer the public an experience, to plunge them into a state conducive to contemplation and questioning, that singular state of art where they lose their footing. My interest in the public pushes me to be vigilant and not to produce a hermetic artistic work, avoiding a tautological art, which would only speak about itself.
It is vital for me to be plural. By taking care not to always adopt the same process, I oblige myself to a constant research in order to diversify the mediums and supports. Producing a heterogeneous work, I attach great importance to the impact caused by the installation of these different plastic researches and their confrontation in space. It is through this that I give meaning to my objects and allow the narrative to take place. It is through the dialectic between the works that I bring out more meaning. Thus, all my pieces are thought of as different parts of the same organism whose echo varies according to their arrangement.