Jerome Btesh is a French contemporary artist born in 1968 who specializes in the reuse and enhancement of industrial materials to create his works, which take the form of sculptures, photographs, and installations.
Jerome Btesh works with materials such as metal, glass, and industrial objects, transforming them.
Since 2000, he has developed a “see with-in me” universe composed of matrices and light boxes.
In the beginning there is a text, an iteration, crafted by the artist, which serves as the axis of the process.
For his matrices, he creates a case-like structure from a thick steel plate folded over a frame, corroded with acid, and then recut. One or more molten glass pebbles reveal a photographic image created exclusively for each work. By moving toward or around the work, the interplay of a mirror makes it possible to reflect suspended metallic printing characters, composing the sentence.
His light boxes are presented as square blocks or long rectangular metal boxes, made of chrome-plated, brushed, or stainless steel. A transparent photograph, inserted and illuminated from within, represents the typographic reflection of the matrix.
Regarding his artistic approach, he states:
“My process is restorative; my formula-texts incorporate a philosophically evolutionary intention. I use the metaphorical dimension of the mirror and inner light.
It’s generational; it’s a succession of added principles where each principle is autonomous and at the same time stems from the previous one, then gives rise to the next, and so on.
What matters is to strive for beauty in every sense of the word.”
Presenting himself as a “citizen of the world,” 600 of his works have been sold to date in 20 countries.
