Jean Denant

Born 1979, Jean Denant lives and works in Sète (France).
“Jean Denant addresses the world. He considers the context of his work on a geopolitical scale. It is by connecting the most trivial everyday life to the major upheavals of History that he is able to reach this universal dimension. His pieces are tautological, the shape, materials, gesture and context build an open approach where criticism is always present. Although he creates objects that have the ability to circulate, he also pays just as much attention to their spatial installation. His exhibitions always have a dimension of immersion. He orchestrates paintings and sculptures in order to completely immerse the onlooker. The scale of his works responds to this desire but also intimately conjures up the artist's relation to his own work. Jean Denant is particularly fond of his workshop experience and this is where he builds his works to scale. He still demonstrates an economy of action and materials. Extracting matter from plaster board and wood in order to design furniture, carving supporting wood to draw forests, agglomerating debris to build pots, for each action there is a material. This formal simplicity contrasts with the complexity of the words. A work of scale, from the human to the world, the town to the individual, geological to memory, intimate to universal, Jean Denant expresses the forces of the world and their contradictions.”
Manuel Pomar