Patrice Cadiou (1947-2015)

Sculpture-Volume Assembly (leather & steel) 1978 170 x 80 x 80 cm Provenance: - Galerie Gérard Laubie, Paris Beaubourg, reproduced on the cover. - Notary Sabbe, Belgium. Exhibitions: 1969: Gallery Moyonavenard, Nantes 1970: Gallery of the Academy, Lausanne. 1972: Condillac Gallery, Bordeaux. 1975: Gallery Huguerie, Bordeaux. 1976: Gallery of Art of the place Beauveau, Paris. 1976: Gallery of Art Popelier, Metz. 1977: Gallery Gérard Laubie, Paris: "Sculpture is a party". 1978: Gallery Gérard Laubie "Sculpture is a festival". Year 2. Personal exhibition "Leather of Cadiou". 2012 : Gallery Les Yeux Fertiles "Talismanic Nights". Patrice Cadiou worked with his vowels and consonants, his primary materials, wood, leather, metals, sometimes bones or the mummified corpses of some animals, all these living materials because perishable from Nature and destined to return. Bertha Rivas taught us the origin of the leather and wood used by Patrice Cadiou, found and brought back from Catalonia, wood from old Catalan fishermen's boats and leather (harnesses, halters, girths, saddles for horses, etc.) of the Spanish Republican Army (1936-1939), which the sculptor had once found and bought because he was fascinated by the history of which they were a testimony: the Spanish Republic beaten and gagged by the fascist regime imposed by Franco until his death in 1975. One can think that the Spanish Republic is the only time, with the Paris Commune, where a libertarian spirit really existed. The republicans were very numerous, since in some Spanish cities they even lived without money, setting up other rules of collective and social functioning. For the libertarian world, Spain is a symbol of the free, indocile and rebellious Spanish character. A little extreme too. Certainly, the maintenance of bullfighting in Spain is a symbol of the survival of this extreme struggle and culture. I insist on the history, the ideology and the culture that feed the raw materials that Patrice Cadiou used because they contribute to the symbolic and spiritual power of his sculptures. It is the part of immaterial of the physical objects, their soul. This is also justified by the titles given by Patrice Cadiou to some of his sculptures (when he names them), "Homage to Manuel Benitez El Cordobès" (2010), one of the most famous matadors of the twentieth century, or "The wild egg, homage to Claude Roffat" (2009), a reference to his friend Claude Roffat and his magazine that he metamorphoses into a work of art. The two sculptures were exhibited at the Halle Saint-Pierre in 2016 and, in 2012 by Jean-Jacques Plaisance, in the Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles in Paris. On the occasion of this exhibition, Claude Roffat wrote a text at the request of his friend the sculptor: "Of what is Patrice Cadiou the messenger, the passer? [...] What Patrice Cadiou gives us to see has no equivalent. And yet all his work seems familiar to us. This is possible because it calls upon an ancestral memory, a memory outside of memory, an unconscious memory. Universal memory too, I feel like writing, as it seems likely to me that certain totems, certain shields (I use these words only for convenience), must have the same resonance, must arouse the same emotion, whatever the viewer, his culture, his ethnicity." The exhibition in Jean-Jacques Plaisance's gallery borrowed its title "Nuits talismaniques" from a book by René Char published in 1972, La nuit talismanique. In his article, Claude Roffat points precisely the attention on the intrinsic memory to the created work which comes to him from the used materials combined with the memory of the artist and the memory of the spectator. The night plays a primordial role in the work of Cadiou, we find it in various degrees. First of all because he worked at night. He joined his workshop at the hour when each one is with his dreams, solitary watchman, he worked his dreams at the hour when one perceives other things that the visible. Here again Claude Roffat, who knew him well, makes an enlightening comment: "This work, which we know to have arisen from the night, is doubly so. Of the night of the artist first of all, of his night, when invisible forces call him, and then of another night, deeper, immemorial, that one", the one he qualifies as Universal Memory. Finally, the black patina, chosen by Cadiou to unify his assemblages is like the veil of a dark night, a more sensual material under the light. In the night the mystery is protected, the attention is sharpened in another report of intelligence of the senses, one believes to feel the leather and the wood one wants to carry the hand to commune with the work in a union at the same time more spiritual and emotional. Florenc