EMILIE BITAULD / DEPART IMMINENT

Emilie Bitauld's painting is the very expression of subjectivity. There is the poetry of a personal and singular world where reflections, the artist's experience and quotations are intermingled. Humility, questioning of certainties and syncretic doubt prevail there. Intertwining painting, drawing, installation, performance, writing, photography, Émilie Bitauld makes the artistic choice of a "whole" which abolishes geographical and artistic borders... She thus gives the first role to the thought which expresses itself and acts. Abstract or figurative, her works catch us by stimulating our cortex as much as our retina via a power of evocation borrowing the marked out roads or the diverted ways of the conscience. She refuses to consider the spectator as a passive being, therefore joining Duchamp and Soulages in the idea that the viewer placed in front of the work of art is also one of its components. Considering herself as her first spectator, she likes to shake up her truths to make others appear. Emotion is not the first research of the artist but it can appear where it was not expected.

Indeed, Émilie Bitauld does not hesitate to operate a merger between art and science delivering then an additional grid of reading to the work. She quotes Einstein who held artists in high regard for their foresight and premonitions, thus influencing our relationship to reality. Shaping her being and her relationship to the world, her early philosophical readings have led her to a commitment to the environment in particular. For the "Invisible" series, notably referring to the Lettrists and the Art and Language collective, the words she inscribed in marker are inspired by the protesters' banners. And, in the manner of appropriationism, she transmits the ideals of the authors quoted, such as Schielling, the Invisible Committee or Guy Debord, whose quotations she inscribed on the canvas. From constraint comes freedom, as the Oulipians say, making the classic choice of painting, Emilie Bitauld gives a framework to her freedom, delimiting a space for expression. It is up to us to gain in return the freedom that is granted to us and to become free spectators...

Romain d’Ignazio