Baptiste Debombourg is interested in the relationships that each of us establishes with everyday objects, the artist’s research takes shape through different media, materials, and supports, from wood to glass, from sculpture to drawing.
With his work, he combines information and materials to reveal repressed, unspoken, or ignored stories that arise from man’s ambitions, from his ego, and manages to bring together sectors and areas that usually ignore each other, such as that of “noble” culture and “popular culture.” He repairs walls, furniture, and objects, at the same time putting their marks on display.
With his work, he combines information and materials to reveal repressed, unspoken, or ignored stories that arise from man’s ambitions, from his ego, and manages to bring together sectors and areas that usually ignore each other, such as that of “noble” culture and “popular culture.” He repairs walls, furniture, and objects, at the same time putting their marks on display.
His work is mainly affirmed by its “monumentality” while being precarious and fragile. Baptiste acts almost as a “sociologist of the present,” investigating the impact of our environment on the evolution of our bodies and our time, making works that always present a dual nature/identity: that which is revealed at first glance, and the intrinsic one, that is, the subtext, or rather, the sub-matter, both produced by the persistence of perceptions.
Recent exhibitions include: In Motion, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland; Dark Tide, organized as part of PASSAGES INSOLITES, in Québec, Canada (2023); Elevation, at the Chi K11 space, in China (2022); Snowball – Rheology, at the Martell Foundation in Cognac (2019); Raging dreams, at the S12 gallery, in Norway (2017).
Winner of several awards and grants, we mention Prizewinner awarded by “les amis de la Maison rouge,” Antoine de Galbert Foundation, Paris; Cultural Affairs grant, Mairie of Paris, free rein for the “Volte-Face” exhibition project in Sarajevo; CNAP Acquisition for the “Métissages” collection curated by Yves Sabourin.
Baptiste Debombourg studied sculpture at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and post-graduated at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is one of the most outstanding young artists of his generation with numerous public installations in France and abroad among which are worth mentioning: La Chaufferie, Galerie de la Hear, Strasbourg; la Maison Rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris; Maison Martin Margiela, Miami and Paris 7e, Paris; Centre d’Art et de Recherche Duplex 100m2, Sarajevo; and Centre d’Art Actuel l’Oeil de Poisson, Québec.
