Experimenter presents Anywhere But Here, Julien Segard’s debut solo in Kolkata.
Segard’s work explores the severe edges perpetuated by urban structures, free flowing contours of nature’s invasion into these structures and the shared intimacy that grow into each other’s spaces and claim each as its own. Abstract representation of the visual appears to be a formal course of approach taken by Segard to encapsulate the apparent movement in form while expressing the anxiety of being held down by the stasis inherent in the seemingly monolithic weight of column-like structures in his paintings and sculptural installations. In recognizing characteristic paradoxes in the field of view through his work, Segard reflects upon ideas of violent ownership of nature and of encountering glaring blindspots in our vision of the landscape and builds a thread of connect through sculptures, installations, works on paper and paintings in his solo, Anywhere But Here.
Segard’s drawings and paintings are characterized by deep, forceful markmaking with charcoal, where forms appear like the underbellies of brutal flyovers, distant horizons occupy the field of vision with dark, growing columns that threaten to block out the light, suggest an ominous vision of the world. Juxtaposed alongside are sculptural installations that seem to rupture this dark vision. Coming togther as an amalgamation of the natural and the manmade, the disparate and definitive lines between the two, seem to blur in the installations. Painted tree trunks intrude into assemblages using metal structures, concrete casts and wooden supports that hold themselves together in precarious balance. Segard’s practice finds its conceptual underpinnings in the Italian “Arte Povera” movement of the ‘60s. He uses found items from the city to build his sculptures such as malleable scrap metal, cloth, wood, paper, canvas, nails – scavenged objects that are repurposed to create a narrative that furthers his intuitive interpretation of cities that are appropriating constantly.
Anywhere But Here reads like an ode that may very well stem from Charles Baudelaire’s poem Elevation, a possible starting point of his peripatetic pursuit. The direction of Segard’s enquiry feels urgent and in contemplating on notions of contemporaneity seeks to address his own locus within the environment that he finds himself surrounded by.
