Alain Gaudebert

Alain Gaudebert | Ceramist 

Born in 1937. Lives and works in Yonne. Alain Gaudebert is a free zone, a man of the sea and the wind, unaccustomed to habits, open to the beauties of the world, its geography, its peoples, its topography, the creations of yesterday and today, crafts and fine arts. It is a welcoming land where diversity reigns supreme. It has been criticized for its frequent changes of course, its overly complex or imposing forms, its excessive ambition, its enamelled debauchery, its plastic truculence. In response, Alain Gaudebert bows his head and continues, as he always has, to work and refute the excessive nature of his work. By emphasizing expression, he merely amplifies nature - nothing more than the bare essentials, in short. Constantly dissatisfied, he searches. Crazy projects haunt him, making him stand up every day in his clay, in the heart of his enamels, facing his wood-fired kilns. With his exacting standards, his conquest of forms - kneaded, shaped, written, thrown, printed, brutalized and loved - and his exceptional mastery of glazes, whether nourished, oily, round or raw, Alain Gaudebert is one of those hard-working people who strive for the absolute every day. He aspires to define the indefinable and circumscribe the indefinable. He aims for a synthesis of impressions. He tackles liquid mass, light and bedrock head-on, adding the variables of time and movement. He fixes the sublime transience, the secret alloy of emotions."

Stéphanie Le Follic-Hadida 
From the Viviane S. catalog, 2016