Ludovic Beillard

Ludovic Beillard’s art leads to a universe where stories, legends, theatre of the absurd and mediaeval imaginary worlds are combined with our contemporary era in all its brutality and hazy : the artist looks for the way in which his contemporaries evolve and externalise cases of people who try to distance themselves from society, as in the past, the Franciscan monks, recluses and today’s ‘enlightened’ characters, mole men living in city basements, etc. He is particularly interested in the way in which they build their living environment according to their means, creating real sets for a theatre of which they are the only spectators. If the creations are total and generous, taken from exhibitions operating as units in which each work is a verse of the poem, they drift in a Kafkaesque rabbit-hole or into the underworld, like those the artist consults in the Urbex videos.

Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard build environments inhabited by figures in which burlesque narratives and absurd theatre unite. Their wearable costumes as well as their sculptures representing characters are a combination of self-sewn clothes and wooden helmets that imitate human faces and other creatures. These figures often represent minorities marginalised by society. Sometimes they appear as protagonists in Aubrit and Beillard’s video installations and sometimes they come to life in the exhibition context. In their extensive staging composed of an assortment of recycled furnishings and/or paper walls, a psychologically charged
state prevails. In a satirical way, they reflect our present day with its brutal and nebulous aspects. For Aubrit and Beillard, however, it is less about presenting a pessimistic view of the world and more about establishing a state of civilisation and highlighting its relations of domination in order to (re)write new forms of collective venting.