Jean-Marie Foubert

September 6 - November 6, 2014

Jean Marie Foubert. Untitled, stoneware. 45 x 45 x 45 cm

Born in 1955, Jean-Marie Foubert's extensive studies led him to become a mechanical engineer in the ceramics industry. In 1991, he decided to buy an old tile factory, which he restored to working order and transformed into a place for artistic creation. From 1998 onwards, following a meeting with the publisher Francis Delille, he quickly gained notoriety for accompanying illustrious artists in the creation of ceramic works: Corneille, Buren, Orozco, Miotte, Zao Wou-Ki and many other visual artists have passed through the Tuilerie de Treigny in the Yonne region.
At the same time, he developed a rigorous and ambitious personal body of work in clay sculpture. The work is anti-figurative, anti-fictional. It is an abstract work close to constructivism and minimalism. The volumes and wall reliefs presented at Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste bear witness to his particular mastery of textures, colors and glazes on dense forms, in a harmonious, pure and uncluttered atmosphere.

For him, the simplicity of volume is less about material than form. His know-how enables him to go beyond questions of material. His technical mastery is so obvious as to be invisible, that it would be pointless for him to be satisfied with it or to derive any glory from it. For him, clay is less a material than a tool. It simply enables him to express his sculptural intentions to the full.
Stéphanie Le Follic-Hadida,
Ph.D. in art history.