As experimental as it is anthropomorphic, Bettina Samson's work attempts to overlap time and space through a protean plastic practice. His works are inspired by historical anecdotes, the artist tracing the thread of scientific discoveries or artisanal and industrial practices, uncovering, by incidence, the paradoxes of modernity.

The panorama offered by this exhibition allows us to look back over ten years of creation through glass or ceramic sculptures, but also photographic prints, etched glass paintings and installations. For the occasion, the artist has also produced an important silver photograph, Silver Nuclear Dust IV , as well as four large ceramic sculptures.

This heterogeneous ensemble is linked by an ambitious choreography imagined by the artist. The space is organized through cut-out graphic motifs, supports for his ceramic sculptures, inspired by the stories of the young Shaker Emily Babcock (1), dating from 1843. At that time, it is from the experience of Mystical trances that people of the Shaker community have given birth to amazing patterns of signs and symbols. These indecipherable forms echo the intricate contortions of Bettina Samson's sculptures. They thus represent the artist's perpetual effort to create pieces that play on the tension between foundation and overflow.

Inaugural exhibition of the new artistic dissemination spaces of the Fabrique Pola (2) , Alligator Wine presents this series of works in dialogue with the new in situ installation, La Vase et le Sel (Hoodoo Calliope) , imagined by the artist in Bègles for the Gar onne artistic commission of Bordeaux Métropole, inaugurated on June 6, 2019. Endowed with mouths as expressive as they are silent, the whistles of the faience sculpture Anima (Steam Whistles) , one of the key pieces of the exhibition, come to life, so to speak. They echo the imposing La Vase et le Sel , which consists of a functional steam organ, gas and sound sculpture. The 38 bronze whistles, in their own way perfectly tuned, are installed on a metal frame, the whole being placed between the Astria Waste Treatment and Recovery Unit and the Garonne river.

La Vase et le Sel explicitly embodies the buried history of Bordeaux. Powered by pressurized steam emitted by the Astria factory, its slender shape blends into the industrial setting. To the rhythm of the tides of the river, his whistles will play at each slack of the tide a piece of music among a series of original compositions inspired by experimental music and African and Haitian polyphonies. These sounds, which evoke the music of brass bands and Funeral Jazz, brass bands of New Orleans, reconstitute a voice and give substance to a repressed past. The history of the distant land of Louisiana, sedimenting a global cultural trajectory which testifies to the important role played by Bordeaux in the colonization and the Atlantic slave trade, the Haitian revolution, and the redefinition of a cultural identity at the turn of the XIXth century.

These rebounds, which range from abstract sculpture, minimal glass pieces to almost figurative installations, invoking an immanent historical experience, are a good illustration of Bettina Samson's practice.

If the materials used are heterogeneous, their common point is resistance to immutability. Raw ceramic resembles stone, while rigid bodies are considered elastic. The hollows and holes generate the pattern and the molten material cools in arrays. Borosilicate glass explores the continuity of convoluted or reversible shapes. The kinetics of the figure merge with animism. The darkness of radioactive dust illuminates negatives in the absence of any exposure. The accidents that occur in the creative process ultimately become elements in their own right. The tendency for metamorphosis is also reflected in the choice of subjects, with Bettina Samson's works often starting with an idea and ending elsewhere. However, these cardinal points will not necessarily have visible links, the disjointed associations being able to bridge the temporal or spatial gulfs, allowing Bettina Samson to address both social, relational and historical dimensions.

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

Jessica saxby

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

(1) During the ceremonies of this millennial, “enthusiastic” movement founded by Ann Lee and which had its peak in the mid-nineteenth century in the United States, Shaker followers experience ecstasies in which they shake or shake themselves. rhythmically shake (hence their nickname). Equalists and even feminists, with a radical singularity, they advocated the community of goods and celibacy. They are well known for their "minimalist" furniture.

In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.

(2) La Fabrique Pola, home port for artistic and cultural practices in New Aquitaine, anchors on the right bank of Bordeaux in a large warehouse rehabilitated by the Nouvelle Agence architectes and collectively imagined. This new site and its exceptional context open up a horizon of invitations addressed to the public and concerned by them. The docking of the Fabrique Pola begins at the beginning of May 2019 with the open doors of the place, continues its artistic maneuver with a subtle and spectacular program signed by the inhabitants of the project, in particular within the framework of the Freedom Season, to firmly anchor on Friday September 13, 2019 during a festive and panoramic inaugural time!