Choo choo MaMa

2017-3-19

It was light rain in March 19, 2017. At the invitation of a friend, I visited the art exhibition <Choo Choo MaMa> of a contemporary French artist, Eric Baudart, which was held at Shanghai Ma Ling Gallery.

The scene began with the glowing discussion of host with artist on creative ideas; later the visitors asked questions in the interactive links; finally, everyone discussed or watched in silence, or gathered for watching with their own understanding and puzzle, spending a relaxed and comfortable afternoon. After all, such an art exhibition did add a faint trace of blue and a glimmer of warmth to the damp weather of Shanghai in this early spring days that turned cold again.

The article thumbnail showed that the host interviewed with Mr. Eric Baudart.

Figure 2 exhibits one of his works named "Le general". (The artist gained it from the Miami junk market, he added the cobweb and slow motor as as to gently twirl the fan with a low speed; static but not stopped, stillness was in the midst of motion; it made a immediate sense of backing to the old days in the spacious room foiled with the large white wall-backdrop; the thoughts also slowed down and entered into a windy sense of presence, seemingly empty but not. As this feeling should be mine, it might not coincide with the original intention of artist, but then why not?!)

Figure 3 shows a work named Cubikron, achieved by stacking the inner springs of Mattress spring.

Figure 4 exhibits a work called Light trap, 2016 aluminium, steel. This work is a tremendous metal work constituted with the sides of each aluminum sheet that has been regularly arranged after cutting with the same specification; according to the staff, its weight is up to 250 kg.

Figure 5 shows a combined work jointly composed of 4 works named Millimeter graph paper (Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black); it is composed with numerous microgrooves and original base map by top-down cutting a mark at interval of 1 millimeter on the plotting paper. It seems that everyone has feelings for this sort of works that contain a appreciably concrete sense as well as the sense of abstract; CMYK is the artist's means of expression and the canvas is the carrier, the artist can tell you the story behind, but at present, it seems that I can only appreciate such some associable carriers that slightly touch with the real world at my level.

Figure 6 shows a work named Hard Day 's Night, 2017 wood, plastic. It really made me lose my head, I communicated with friends on the spot but indeed I couldn't appreciate it. But after 2 days, a work of surreal oil painting in the WeChat of a Taiwan friend suddenly came into my view, and thus I thought of this incomprehensible table; wasn't it the tridimensional oil painting exercise that the artist wanted to express it with a set of still life?! Did I think too much?!...

Artist profile

Mr. Eric Baudart was born in Paris, France in 1972. He was skilled at misappropriating, renovating and conversing the ready-made objects and taking away the objects that people are accustomed to and do not to wink at from the functionality and then conducting the isolation, disassembly and recombination. He was more influenced by Dadaism and French neorealism; and he held the individual exhibitions at Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, La Maison Rouge and other institutions, he also participated in the joint exhibitions in Geneva Museum of Contemporary Art, Paris Palace Royal, Contemporary Art Center of Brussels and Bath Art Gallery of Miami. He won the "Maurice prize for contemporary art" in 2011. The creations have ever been reported by Mousse Magazine, Slash Paris, Wall Street Journal and other international medias. His works now are collected by the Boston Art Museum and Geneva Museum of Contemporary Art.

Journalist: Louis Wu