Thomas Godin

From copper to light

In the nocturnal intimacy of his studio, Thomas Godin, as an alchemist, transforms copper into light. The surface of its engraved plaques becomes a space as vast as it is deep. The sky and the sea seem to take pleasure in meeting there. It must be said that as an autodidact, the artist follows to the letter the teaching that nature teaches. Because he knows how to listen to it, the wind blows his ideas. Because he knows how to see them, the clouds, in passing, lavish him with very wise advice. Because he is Breton, Thomas Godin has beaten the paths of the world with his vagabond steps. This simultaneity of rooting and travel nourishes his relationship with the world and contributes greatly to the richness of his art. Equidistant between the spirit of the artist and the body of the craftsman, his approach is entirely the quest for unity, both formal and spiritual.

If the contemplation of his engravings does not require any particular knowledge, they nevertheless constitute as much access to a grandiose world where linguistics meets cartography and ethnology, sociology. In short, the work of Thomas Godin is an effective link between art and life.

According to a very Asian approach to existence, the “consciousness of", which the artist has established as an authentic way of life, allows him to maintain fruitful dialogues with materials, with colors and with the shapes that sometimes result by chance of their combinations. The engraver remains confident. He knows he's doing it right.

Imperceptibly gripping a horizon line - a simple line delimiting the sky from the sea - many of Thomas Godin's works are landscapes, that is to say self-portraits since, in his case, reality is also nested in power. imagining of his mind, his memory, his soul. Toned by the spray of a liquid sky, it simply sculpts the ephemeral existence of the atmosphere. All his views have the elegance of not asserting anything. They only suggest and allow each spectator to recognize places, to recognize themselves in places. By inviting itself into the spaces hollowed out by the burin, the ink colors the white surface of the paper. Traces are stains, stains are shapes. Under the implacable mechanism of its press, these forms gain its autonomy and the eruptive silhouette of an Indonesian volcano can become the sublime flaking of a boat hull or the escarpment of a coastline at low tide. The viewer's interpretation completes a work in which several subjectivities merge.

The symbolic power of the discs that spread along the walls of his Landernese gallery comes from the depths of time. A distant echo of Chinese archeology, of African votive practices, they are the happy witnesses of a sensitive thought on life, its tragic and beautiful cycle at the same time.

Between night and day, here and elsewhere, reality and fantasy, heart and mind, Thomas Godin's engravings are bridges between worlds that the intelligence of his hand knows how to bring together. in a secret unit.