Bruno Botella – Fromage de nuit

Bruno Botella pursues an experimental body of work in which sculpture and drawing play a central role. He develops performative devices that allow him to disengage from himself while capturing the imprint of his psychic activity in a sculpted object. Boxes for sculpting blind, a bed with a hole in the mattress giving access to a box filled with clay hidden under the bed base, sculpture shaped in an aquarium filled with leeches, the use of anaesthetic clay or hallucinogenic modelling clay of his own invention, are just some examples of the devices and materials that Botella uses to free himself from his perceptions, sensations and even his conscience, in order to give form, as he puts it, to ‘figures without kinship or species’. 

For this exhibition, he has imagined a new device, Incubat, that enables him to sculpt while he’s sleeping a modelling paste mixed with medicinal herbs reputed to stimulate dream activity. The public will also be able to activate a Heaume, a sculpture inside which the user can insert his or her head to inhale amyl nitrite vapour (poppers) while watching a cartoon specially designed by the artist. 

Mirroring these plastic and sensory experiments, the artist uses a calligraphy brush to produce drawings of great graphic freedom, through which he develops a strange and unexpected hallucinatory universe. Several of his most recent sketchbooks will be on show.