About
Extract from the Telegram 02.09.18
"Each deconstructed evidence enlarges the world".
It all started by chance, a person introduced Thomas Godin to the technique of printing engraving. "An art that is alchemy", he discovered. After making his first print, he has a "revelation". Her life no longer flourishes. "I realized that I needed to create to be happy." His travel desires are concentrated and will be expressed with this art which he experiences as "an interior journey". "The engraving makes me plunge into a meditative state, a concentration made of slow movements, like a ballet, in slow motion".
For him, each engraving is a landscape. He recognizes that the technique is often a bit obscure, "everyone has their own kitchen". It is a subtle alchemy between craftsmanship and chemistry for the technical part, "disciplines that respond to each other". First you have to “relax” the paper, soaked in water. "The cotton fibers soak up water so that the paper, under the press, becomes" in love "with the plate and looks for traces of ink in the smallest grooves. An engraving is a mirror image which is constructed with the bites of acid ”.
While at work, he takes his intaglio ink diluted with linseed oil which he rubs on an engraved zinc plate. With a tool of his invention, he spreads it to reveal the streaks.
“It is a play of light and shadow. through the fog, the plaque appears. The more I wipe, the more light I find ”. He palms his hand with white chalk, the white of Meudon, and caresses the plate. Then, he sets in motion a mechanical press, "I'm almost ashamed to have switched to electric, but before it was manual, a turn of the crank for 1 cm of movement on a 1.50 m plate, c was hellish! " With dark hands, he discovers his new impression. “Each time, it is an ineffable feeling of joy. An additional layer to the beauty of the world ”. Even if he recognizes that for him it is very often missed, he keeps only the best and destroys the rest not corresponding to his first vision!
“My imagination has become even more open with Breton, its poetry, its colorful colors. Each new word opens a horizon for me. When I am in my studio, I live in the wonderful language of Breton. It allows me to express the land, the sea, the nature to which it is very close ”.
Professor, he also teaches etching in Breton, even if he is less and less available to transmit. His engravings are called "Beaj", Voyage, "Diskar Amzer", autumn, the time of the fall, or "Peñsead an oabl", shipwrecked from the sky.
Informed, Thomas Godin participated, from the first year in the contemporary art prizes, of Landivisiau and Brest which he both won unanimously, as well as the 1st prize of an Australian patron who opened him, in November 2018, a personal exhibition. These prices encourage him and make him known to galleries. They give him the confidence to send engravings to Japan, a master country for prints, which will be exhibited in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.
For his participation in the Parisian price of Saint Pierre les Nemours, he puts all his savings in the journey, hangs his engravings "framed with the means at hand" "with raffia on the back", arrives as a real "provincial", " word that I abhor ", and won the prize for contemporary art. When contacted by the William Blake foundation to exhibit alongside works by Picasso, Miro and Kandinsky, the inaccessible dream of the young Saint Politain crystallized.
"The unexpected is a return to reality"
From Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger to Unesco via the Philippines.
While Thomas Godin is working in his workshop in preparation for a solo exhibition in Cebu City, the Philippines, an elegant man came on the advice of a friend. He buys engravings, discusses. Convinced by the work of Thomas Godin, Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, businessman responsible for Taittinger champagnes, invites the artist to visit his land, in Reims. It is a sparkling encounter for Thomas Godin with this patron family, involved in art and having previously worked with artites like Zao Wou-Ki or Hartung. “Champagne is transmission, celebration, pleasure, the earth! “, Rejoices the artist. Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, "pleasant and very open man" offers the young engraver a first collaboration. The Champagne region has just been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and he has commissioned a work on the theme of reconciliation. Thomas Godin engraves a Champagne plot seen from the sky, tortured red furrows, a blue and yellow nature which "takes back its rights without forgetting the stigmata of the past". The work, today at Unesco, pleases and Thomas Godin is ready for the next collaborations which will "speak to him and touch him"; elementary engine for an artist's heart which first wants to transmit emotions.