es Landes, Benoît Barsacq has made it his playground. At 32, this young artist took up a five-week residency at Inertam. This company, based in Morcenx-la-Nouvelle, specializes in the destruction of asbestos and the recovery of its by-product, called cofalit. It is this stone, as solid as it is fragile, that the sculptor tried to understand.
It is in this mound of cofalit that the artist went in search of the founding pieces of his…
es Landes, Benoît Barsacq has made it his playground. At 32, this young artist took up a five-week residency at Inertam. This company, based in Morcenx-la-Nouvelle, specializes in the destruction of asbestos and the recovery of its by-product, called cofalit. It is this stone, as solid as it is fragile, that the sculptor tried to understand.
Matthew Sartre
It is in this mound of cofalit that the artist went in search of the founding pieces of his works.
To do this, he began collection work upon his arrival on the scene. A blackish mound contrasts with the hundred purple-tinted containers. Small and large fragments mingle. Inside, Benoît Barsacq found “fascinating” raw material, on which he prepared to spend long hours. “I always told myself I would work on it. »
“The first, rather shiny layer, called vitrificate, is extremely fragile. It looks like obsidian. Then, the rest of the block requires more complex cutting,” he explains. Safety equipment in place, he launches the table saw. With a deafening noise, the disc splits the cofalit. Sparks fly. And it ends up getting the desired shape. “It is necessary to have precise tools. I got used to working under constraints. » Next comes the sanding and polishing stage.
Matthew Sartre
Sometimes very dense, sometimes porous, cofalit is full of difficulties. The artist had to demonstrate flexibility to bring his project to fruition.
“Playing with textures”
Faced with the constraints imposed by vitrified asbestos, the sculptor had to review his pretensions. Impossible to create large structures due to the “friability” of the material and the impossibility of inserting it into a pre-constructed mold. “I thought it was simpler,” he confides. On the ground, three of his works stand, approximately 30 centimeters high. The artist wanted to “play with textures” and “natural elements”.
Two are made up of a complex assembly between several stones of different colors and shapes. The third is a core whose base is made of heated rosin resin. “I took this direction, to work on the Landes, because I feel legitimate to talk about it,” admits this kid from Morcenx-la-Nouvelle. He also created a monochrome painting measuring one meter by one meter, in a “petroleum blue” color.
Matthew Sartre
In the foreground, three of the artist’s works, which he created during his five-week residency.
Experiences
If Benoît Barsacq was able to carry out this residency, it is also thanks to the Zebra 3 association, based in Bordeaux. The director, Frédéric Latherrade, praises the interest of this type of project for artists. “This allows you to work in a context different from the workshop. But also to create links as you meet people on site. »
“I feel legitimate to talk about it”
This initiative benefited from financial support from the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (Drac) Nouvelle-Aquitaine as part of the Art and world of work system. Access to this very specific material with “its plastic force” capable of going from a “very dense” black to a “porous rock” allowed the artist to carry out several experiments. “He wishes to continue his work with this material and would like to have a slightly larger body of work,” underlines the director.
Matthew Sartre
By creating this monochrome painting measuring 1 meter by 1 meter, the sculptor wanted to play on “textures” and “reflections”.
The artist is already thinking about the possibility of heating the cofalit above 1,700°C to be able to shape it better. After five weeks spent at Inertam, Benoît Barsacq admits “that he is starting to understand this subject”.
