Exhibition to be found on latlas.beauxartsparis.fr, the virtual gallery of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, with an exclusive interview of the artist Jean Bedez and the curator Emmanuelle Brugerolles.
Due to the latest government regulations the exhibition Jean Bedez, De Sphaera Mundi is not open to the public at the moment. For the moment, it is open by appointment only to professionals in the strictest respect of sanitary conditions.
The exhibition “De sphaera mundi – Sur la sphère du monde” is an opportunity to present a set of new works by the artist, including an eponymous series made in 2019, as well as three exceptional works created for the occasion. It offers a cosmic exploration revisiting myths, in resonance with the Beaux-Arts de Paris collections.
Jean Bedez's graphite mine drawings offer representations of the contemporary world that function as modern allegories: between political and religious power, entertainment culture or the role of the citizen, they explore the relations of domination in our societies.
The series of drawings “De Sphaera mundi” confronts 12th century planispheres from Gerard of Cremona's The Theory of the Planets with images of a comet observed by the space probe Rosetta; medieval cartographies are telescoped to the latest space technology. The three large drawings are inspired by a sculpture by Michelangelo, dated around 1530 and very damaged by time, representing the battle of Hercules against Cacus. In the works of Jean Bedez, the great Hercules, making Cacus bite the dust, becomes dust himself again. His right arm, the very one that holds his fetish weapon, has disappeared. Ruin wins him, light and darkness clash into a chaotic landscape. It is this damaged, fragile Heracles that Jean Bedez evokes, at least his mediocre aptitude to reach us intact, faithful to himself, the owner without concession of the incredible power which had fallen to him. But mythology is not the only business of the artist, each motif echoes an alchemical, astrophysical, political, poetic, esoteric reality. This is what his works show, the details of an infinite cosmogony and labyrinth that is only at its beginnings.
Graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2001, Jean Bedez was awarded the Lucien Quintard artistic prize for painting, in 1999, at the Stanislas academy in Nancy for a conceptual graphic work questioning the notion of autograph work and the relationship to Time. Both a sculptor and a draftsman, he has exhibited at the CRAC Languedoc Roussillon, Suzanne Tarasiève Gallery, Albert Baronian Gallery, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Palais de Tokyo.
Hercule et Cacus
De Sphaera Mundi
De Sphaera Mundi
