Andes A. Beaulé

Putting the codes of the book, graphic design, printmaking, and abstract drawing into relation in space, Andes A. Beaulé probes interstices, margins, and their transformative potential. In their works, they erects liminal spaces in sites of exploration and discovery that suggest reinventions far beyond the strictly formal. At Est-Nord-Est, Beaulé revisited the book both as artefact and as medium for thought, reiterating their wish “that the margins allowing us to breathe be large, very large” (the title of an artist’s book that they published in 2023; our translation). Taking advantage of the long, narrow shape of the residency studio space, they deployed a sentence-like installation on the floor, articulated from reference books that they had used in their research, found or made objects, and materials laid out freely and evoking more or less explicitly the frameworks associated with the book. In this way, they explored the page, graphic composition, edges, lines, drop caps, and characters, as well as how the book could be presented: closed, opened flat, or placed in a showcase. Copper and steel plates of different formats arranged on the floor, referring to the printing process, punctuated the installation. A series of large-format abstract drawings accompanied the arrangements on the floor and responded to their colours. The vertical format of the paper, the highly graphic composition of the drawings, and the margins left blank also evoked a layout process. To this use of abstraction, however, were added the materiality of the paper and the motif, what they revealed and what they hid, both in visual terms and in a more private register. Overall, Beaulé’s openness to the heart of exploratory formal work was displayed as an “ethics” of life, testifying to the freedom that they give themselves not to conform to identity or gender norms. They also invited us to reinvent ourselves and seize the possibilities for transformation offered by what we often take for granted. In this context, abstraction acted in Beaulé’s work as a metaphor for both revealing and modesty and embodied the private and public spheres in which the questions they raised play out.