Making pages in the book of dreams
French-born Edouard Baribeaud’s pen-to-paper worlds are testament to a process that while ancient, still holds relevance. Working mainly from his imagination, his meticulous aesthetic draws together painting, collage, engraving and graphic elements. His close attention to technique, composition, overlap and layers is owed to his study of printmaking and illustration.
Located in the complex previously occupied by Haunch of Venison near Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof, the walls of his vast studio are covered in neatly laid-out gouache on paper drawings, and one whole wall is given over to windows and desks. As well as having a clear and concise appreciation of how to accumulate his drawings into series, he also makes artist books. “With drawings you can always choose a new ways to present the images in a gallery, but in a book you have to choose one way. I like to work in both, sometimes more freely: it’s like finding a rhythm. Working in an artist’s book is like cutting a film.”
Some of the works tacked up for display are part of his recent series, “Hic Sunt Leones”, a title that draws on the Latin “Here Be Dragons” which is used to refer to unexplored territories. It references the cartographic practice of placing mythological creatures in uncharted areas. This interest in “terra incognita” led him to consider where the uncharted territories lie in a time of Google maps and satellite imagery. “Maybe the unknown places are only in your head?” he wonders.
Baribeaud addresses reality in colour. In his new large-scale work “Frühling” he responds to the revolution in the Middle East and the proliferation of mobile phone footage, most recently exemplified by the death of Colonel Gaddafi. Baribeaud considered, “rebellion is very old, it is just the technique that changes. I wanted to confront the old imagery with imagery from today and confront the occidental world with the oriental world… it’s very influenced by music also, a bit like a cacophony.”
“Frühling” does have that effect, a flattened collage of varying styles influenced by news and pop culture including a reference to the Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus”. “I think it’s interesting that when you’re reading the news on Syria next to advertising on Louis Vuitton or Nike, in the end all this information is flattening. At the beginning people thought that the earth was flat, then the earth was round, then came Google Maps and it’s flat again.”
Historically, the religious triptych held a central colour panel opened for big occasions; Baribeaud applies the same logic. His pop-up window-style, multi-image central panel is contrasted with the sober black and white reserved for the outer triptych panels. Here he employs images of a monochrome, mountainous utopia where one image in particular is taken from the Paramount movie logo. “Hollywood was selling dreams, utopias,” he notes.
Perhaps surprisingly for an artist that draws so strongly on his imagination, Baribeaud rarely dreams, So when he does, it is important for him. As is the flight into the real world. “I work a lot in the studio, but it’s sometimes very important to go out and confront the work with reality, and video is a good way to do that. You have to choose the order of images, and there is a time and sound element.”
Unseen visions come to him from pop culture, news, dreams and, most importantly, find a way to solidify and become concrete through the linear renderings direct from his mind’s eye.
Text by Susanna Davies-Crook