Panis
Sosthène
Baran
Sosthène Baran was born in Blois in 1990, and lives and works in Paris and Normandy. After training as a chef, decorative painter and graphic designer, he obtained his DNSEP in 2020 from the École Supérieure d’Arts & Médias of Caen/Cherbourg, where he developed his painting and sculpture practice.
His works are created in layers, using sketches, on-the-spot manipulations and ...3D modeling, successively or not. The plastic elements that emerge are then immersed in a singular, luminous universe akin to a mirage; his painting infuses recycled objects, furniture, frames and supports. Elena Lespes Muños, art historian and curator, uses the term “contamination”, and adds: “The elements he randomly finds on his drifts – door, wooden casement, window frame, headboard – become his mediums, in a gesture motivated as much by a desire to emerge in the place of fallen things, as by an economy of resources… (1) ”
Sosthène Baran makes his own tools, such as long brushes of different sizes, hybrid brushes and face-shaped spatulas, to create unique and unusual effects. He works the surface with matter and the background with paint and volume. He likes to combine lights, figures, bodies and objects that populate a fantastic, hallucinatory and silent theater in perpetual performance. Science fiction, the supernatural, extraterrestrials, humans, religious narratives and the apparition in general are the main themes of his work. They have given rise to a hybrid spirituality with multiple influences. He questions beliefs and their forms, their place in today’s society and the trace left by human beings. Volumes, objects, bodies and figures are unidentified and wandering in blurred landscapes. They are there to cast a skeptical eye, beyond the real, on our relationship to the world, to nature, to the sacred, to our identity and its disappearance. Fiona Vilmer, independent critic and curator, speaks of “detachment from the real”: “Built on a poetic regime, this material imprints fictions that melt into gestures and their appearance. Sosthène Baran’s paintings reflect his attempts to detach himself from reality, their auratic layers revealing floating figures… (2) ”
1 – Extract from a text by Elena Lespes Muñoz for an article in the magazine In-sert n°1 by RN13bis published in May 2022.
2 – Extract from a text by Fiona Vilmer for the online exhibition DATA-BAT, 2021 with Les Bains-Douches in Alençon ( 61 )

2024 PAR DÉSIR, PAR HASARD, Galerie C, Paris.

2023 TRUST NO ONE, BELIEVE THE LIE et THE END à la Cité internationale des arts, Paris.

2022 ANTIFER, LE SHED, centre d’art de Normandie, Rouen , invitation de Jonathan Loppin.

2024 DE LA TENDRESSE 2, curateur Eliott Paquet, Poush Manifesto, Aubervilliers.

2023 J’AIME PLUS L’ÉTÉ, commissariat Emma Brisot et Hippolyte Sadrin, Paris.

– BLOC-NOTES, commissariat de Tiffany Dornoy et Anna Marckwald, Villa Belleville, Paris.

– DE LA TENDRESSE, curateur Eliott Paquet, Placement Produit, Aubervilliers.

– LE RETOUR DE LA NARRATION, curatrice Marie Maertens, Accuracy, Paris.

2022 THE QUICK FOX BROWN JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG, curateur Vincent-Michaël Vallet, Le 4artistrunspace, b612, Rennes.

– LCDLK, USINE UTOPIK, centre d’art, Tessy sur Vire.

2021 DE VISU, Le Radar, Espace d’art actuel, Bayeux.

– DIVINITÉS, FLEURS, PLIS ET REPLIS, curatrice Sophie Vinet, Les Bains-Douches, Alençons.

– L’HORIZON SOUPIRE, À VENIR (Léo Fourdrinier/Clément Davout ), Caen.

– REPEUPLER NOS MONDES, curatrice Sarina Basta, Galerie de l’ESAM.

2020 DATA-BAT, exposition collective en ligne, Les Bains-Douches, Alençons.

– MANIÈRE D’HYBRIDER DES MONDES, exposition des diplômé( e )s des écoles d’art Normande ÉSAM/ESADHAR/ENSA, curateur Matthieu Lelièvre, Caen.

– PRIX JUVENARS, sélectioné et exposé, ISDAT, Paris.

2019 PRIX DE PEINTURE NOVEMBRE À VITRY, sélectioné et exposé, galerie municipale Jean Collet, Vitry sur Seine.

2016 Exposition collective, galerie AAB, Paris.

Collection Artothèque de Caen

2023 Résidence Soudain l’été prochain, DRAC Normandie et RN13bis.

– Résidence à la VILLA BELLEVILLE, Paris.

– Résidence à la Cité Internationale des Arts à Paris, partenariat ESAM Caen et CEA.

2021 Résidence au Labo des Arts, Caen.

"du jour" • a solo exhibition by Sosthène Baran26/09/2024 - 22/11/2024Panis77 rue Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen (Fr)
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Plus d’infos
« Le retour de la narration (en) »Par Marie Maertens
Poetic, enigmatic... referring to classical subjects such as landscape or portrait, Sosthène Baran's paintings are the beginnings of a narrative rereading the history of art, sometimes flirting with science fiction, in order to plunge us into an indefinite timelessness. Those familiar with nineteenth-century painting will naturally be drawn to these works, in which we sense an admiration as much for the symbolist Odilon Redon as for the Barbizon school or other landscape painters. These artists were extremely sensitive to the subtle evolution of color and light. But a close look at the frames and objects that disrupt or enrich his canvases also reveals a resurgence of a Dada spirit and the pleasure of finding, collecting, accumulating... In addition to his classical training in the fine arts, he also worked as a set painter, and is highly skilled in handling the effects of texture and depth. Sosthène Baran often starts with the backgrounds - like paint juices - in a studio overflowing with brushes of various sizes and tools for scraping, pruning... In parallel with the gradual appearance of the image, he infuses effects that will somewhat brutalize the softness of his blue or ochre tones and natural dexterity, also by adding wood or scrap elements. Little by little, he refines this disquieting strangeness, widely developed since its enunciation by Dr. Freud... July 2023.
« Revue In-sert n°1 par RN13bis (en) »Par Elena Lespes Muñoz
Sosthène Baran seeks this detachment from reality in a very different way. On the lookout for a non-voluntary trace deposited on the canvas that would make a sign in spite of itself, the painter is in search of an image that does not enunciate itself. In his silent paintings, shadows pass, silhouettes glide and ghosts emerge. Even the frames are contaminated by this latent evaporation, as if the pictorial matter inhabited by an entropic force absorbed everything around it, punctually delivering and regurgitating apparitions on its surface. Crossed by both SF and mythically-inspired narratives, Sosthène Baran seems to engage in an esoteric hand-to-hand combat with the act of painting, seeking to “attain something like an extraterrestrial painting”. The elements he picks up randomly during his wanderings - door, wooden casement, window frame, headboard - become his supports, in a gesture motivated as much by a desire to emerge in the place of fallen things, as by an economy of resources. His preparatory work on backgrounds, inherited from his work as a painter-decorator, functions as a mantra, an instrument of vision in which the successive alterations of the solid surface, between the violence and gentleness of rubbing, sanding and scratching, aspire to the unattainable. A vain quest, given the fragility of mirages. In this respect, Sosthène Baran's painting is akin to fantasy, persisting in a form of indecision, not seeking to invent a world, but rather to interfere with what is already there.
« DATA-BAT (en) »Par Fiona Vilmer
Almost unconsciously, we realize that the atmosphere makes what has to do with reality opaque, through the fictional element masked in the forms. From then on, reality as a vector of images becomes a blurred, manipulable material. Built on a poetic regime, this matter imprints fictions that melt into gestures and their appearance. Sosthène Baran's paintings bear witness to his attempts to detach himself from reality, their auratic layers revealing floating figures. Text by Fiona Vilmer for the online exhibition DATA-BAT, early 2021 with the Bains-Douches in Alençon ( 61 )