We caught up with Artist Baptiste Ibar ahead of his new show
Before Your eyes (Busts) and sent him over a few questions.
The show is being curated by the founders of Art Barter after they won one of their own barters ! The show opens on Saturday March 10th more details here: artbarter.co.uk/news
1.If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
A gardener
2. Can you tell us more about your work and what are the main ideas you would like to express?
I am more interested in feelings rather than ideas. Ideas come and go a hundred times a second for me. Feelings linger and haunt me and make me want to see a work over and over again.
For this group of paintings, I decided to use the human bust as a vehicle to explore the personal and collective dimensions of the subconscious.
The show is called “Before your eyes” and before your eyes there was a heart. From that heart comes a language that makes sense intuitively and subconsciously. Using certain symbols, unusually connected to the natural world, to decorate the busts and create a certain depth, rhythm and harmony, the busts begin to feel alive and start to vibrate.
3. How do you start the process of making work?
I usually start by putting on a record. Music always sets me in motion. My process changes depending on the materials I am working with, and I try to explore different surfaces and materials to keep me a bit off balance. But usually I begin with collage and acrylic paint and I start making marks and reacting to those marks etc…. I don’t believe in mistakes. Then I finish with oils.
4. Do you consider the viewer, when making your work?
I am the viewer. So I consider myself. I don’t think it is very healthy creatively for me to consider other people because then it becomes a matter of the mind, instead of a matter of the heart, which I am more interested in. The mind is always playing tricks on me and wanting to react to others, it’s more about fashion or fads, what’s hip and what’s hot, while the heart seems to me to be more eternal and timeless.
5. Name 3 artists that have inspired your work?
Gustav Klimt, Katsushika Hokusai Alberto Giacometti
6. Name 3 of your least favourite artists.
That’s hard because I never think of those artists if there work does nothing for me, I forget them very quickly. But some you can’t get away from like Damien Hirst and Lady Gaga… they demand attention but after some time with their work I always feel kind of empty and depressed.
7. What defines something as a work of art?
The viewer I suppose. Context is always so important to that question. Someone scratching his ass can be art in the right context. Is a beautiful sun setting art? Or is it art when someone says, isn’t that a beautiful sunset?…. I don’t know. I think the scientific answer is that its not art until there is some kind of self-awareness going on, the viewer.
8. In times of austerity, do you think art has a moral obligation to respond topically?
“The imagination is not a state; it is human existence itself” William Blake
I think Blake says it beautifully. Art is always responding topically no matter what “times” we think we are in. Art is here, hopefully as a reminder that the imagination is the most powerful, beautiful and potentially destructive human trait we have.
We can imagine just about anything and we are easily manipulated. Hopefully, Art opens up all potentials again and again.
9. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
Bruce Lee
10. What is your favourite ‘ism’?
Taoism
11. What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
“By portraying the cycles of nature as a unifying link between contemporary and ancient cultures, Ibar successfully infuses a spirit into pop that speaks to our primal need for connection in the midst of a media-saturated culture.”
12. And the dumbest?
“Its all bullshit, the imagination doesn’t have influence on the physical world”
13. Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
Maurizio Cattelan
14. Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
Yes I care because I make a living selling it. I wish I could barter it all but we don’t live in that kind of a world yet.
15. If Moma and the Tate and the Pompidou wanted to acquire one of your works each, which would you want them to have?
“The Fortune Teller” for Moma, “Les Carte” for the Pompidou and “The young art critic” for the Tate
16. What’s next for you?
More shows, Morocco, Japan, New Orleans, China, India, and Brooklyn for some fine music.
