Allor porsi la mano un poco avante
e colsi un ramicel da un gran pruno;
e ‘l tronco suo gridò: “Perche mi schiante?”
Dante Alighieri – Divine Comedy (14th Century)
Inferno, Thirteenth Canto
Édouard Nardon’s work is solidified through a process of ennobling personal allegories on the border between the ancestral and the imaginary.
Through sculptures and paintings, he loads the matter with emotional meaning and apparent carelessness and, by allowing his work to absorb his emotional experiences, frees himself from them.
All his artistic practice is strongly influenced by ideas of interpretation and subjectivity. His modus operandi often commences with sketches based on figurative elements of the external world, which could be interpreted as unresolved forms of abstraction. The elements obtained thus far act as a support for a second phase, that of creating signs on several levels.
Nardon paints on raw canvas, which means that he cannot erase any line or gestural trait. This creates a certain tension in the creative act: a layer imposes onto another, the stratification generates an intricate complex of forms that are connected to each other in an infinite dialectic between conflict and harmony.
Nardon aims to detach himself as much as possible in elaborating his paintings, moving away from the logical and reaching a state in which the unconscious gesture plays a role in shaping the form. He is strongly influenced by the classical representation of the human body and how emotion can be expressed through posture in both painting and sculpture.
His ideas suggest a complex use of materials: being extremely fascinated by the integration between industrial and organic elements, Nardon carefully chooses all those found objects that are intrinsically three-dimensional, ranging from eBay to large landfills, from antique shops to building materials, not forgetting the inevitable city streets. Among all, soap, for example, requires a precise chemical formulation that leaves room for a veiled symbolism that materially whispers an alchemic proximity to Pruno: the prison wine. Suddenly the allegory becomes a ritual, a visual potion in its intertwining of layers.
It is through such a disjointed unity that Nardon strongly wants his works to anticipate the act of metaphorical interpretation because everything is already untangled according to a practice of linear elevation similar to the fermentation that leads to intoxicating visions.
- Domenico de Chirico, 2019
