Bagot Yann

• Born in 1983, France
• Lives in Fontainebleau and works in Montreuil, France

Yann Bagot's art is one of observation and introspection. Working exclusively with drawings in situ, he gives shape to the intensity of his experience of nature, offering it to the viewer's gaze.
His experience of life is mirrored by his experience as a painter, as he constantly dips his brush into black, fluid ink to render all its modulations, drawing shifting strokes of infinite nuance, as light as feathers or as thick as charcoal, often drifting towards abstraction.
Sea, rocks, trees, forests: the artist allows himself to be invaded by their forces and energies, projecting them onto paper in drawings that owe as much to the precision of his technique as to the chance of the water and salt used. A chance orchestrated by the painter himself, who doesn't hesitate to encourage dew, waterfalls or tree leaves to intervene on the paper.
In 2023, when he was in Brussels for a workshop at the La Cambre drawing studio, he wandered through the Forêt de Soignes, revealing its secret energies and poetic grace in drawings of sculptural trees, exuberant thickets at the edge of the wood and half-invaded walls.
What emerges here is neither copy nor reproduction, but a rhythm, a "flow of matter, shadow and light" reminiscent of jazz - another of his passions - a music of extreme sophistication combined with the purest improvisation.
Beyond the obviousness of the representation, what Yann Bagot invites us to perceive is the very breath of the forest and, beyond that, of a nature whose beauty is offered to our contemplation.
Text by Isabelle Poujet, 2024