About

Impossible, unthinkable, to begin to evoke Antoine Brodin by one end or another, a beginning, right side up. a beginning, right side up. Or backwards, for that matter. Like his plays, you have to take him in a before, during and after period. One might think that it is the same for everyone, that a bit of biography could quench a thirst for understanding, knowledge, classification, and that it would be, methodologically speaking, a coherent, non-definitive approach, allowing us to get to know the character. Not so. Quite simply.

It is enough to have conversed under the stars, on a terrace, among the Harrisonian plants, about Morinian sociology, Damasio science fiction, Jodorowskyian considerations, Levi Straussian openings, a few astrophysical fantasies, paradigm shifts, his origins, to know that he is of the type of person who can't be classified and that he prefers to avoid being classified, of those who don't walk straight, , Levi Straussian openings, a few astrophysical fantasies, paradigm shifts, his origins, to know that he is of the type of person who can't be classified and that he prefers to avoid being classified, of those who don't walk straight, adventurers of the coffee pot, drinkers of the imaginary, surveyors of the great marches of the mind, the accident victims, those who like to breathe the world and make its threads touch, the curious, the researchers, the labyrinthine thoughts. You have to trust the first thing that comes along. The words that have sprung up over our heads? Displacements, movements, balances, overflows, increases, entropy, sharing, contemplation, agitation, melancholy, rapture, chaos, cosmos, all cosmos.

Talking with Antoine Brodin is obviously embroidery. It is weaving a conversation. It is to cobble together (with the means at hand) reflections, perspectives, which also offers a relevant entry point into his work as an artist, poet, draughtsman and glassblower. One is reminded of Victor Hugo's famous phrase "Form is the substance that rises to the surface".

His inspirations are Japanese, cosmic, historical, artistic, Arabic, Oriental, Indian, Amerindian, they have something of the beat generation, they come from and his mind is filled with bits of exoticism, bits of language, references, which he creatively articulates. To tell the truth, we find him quite nomadic, and migratory, even migrating. There is also fantasy and romance in him. His texts (his objects) show us that he is always on the move, that everything is referenced, that he likes to connect, that it crosses. That it combines, that he makes connections. And it's a choice. A choice insinuated by the artist, who is looking for leads, who is revolving around the idea, perhaps, of a change of paradigm, of a change not in practices, but in the perception that he himself would have of his path.

Leaving some conceptions at the side of the road to embrace others, continuing the same thing but with a different awareness. A kind of distancing? It is a style, a philosophy, an approach, a furrow, materials, words, symbols, which continue to be put in place. Because the artist is in suspension.

Written by Manuel Fadat