Sebastien Dubois

b.1993, Ivry sur Seine (France).

EDUCATION

23-24, Florence Academy of Art, Certificate Program, Florence (Italy)

21-23, Royal College of Art, MA Painting, London (UK)

16-17, Pantheon Sorbonne University, Master in Digital Economics, Paris (France)

15-16, Sorbonne University, Musicology, Paris (France)

Contact

Degree Details

The 20th century was able, most notably with Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud, to highlight the portion of Excess dormant in Humankind, and which, furthermore and in a combined movement, reveals its relationship with both Evil and the Sacred.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Excess, more than ever, has become the keystone of a society now deemed to be hyper-modern, wherein not a single facet escapes from the logic of disproportion and abundance. The need for attention, narcissism, violence, over-consumption, destruction of the environment… It’s all part of a world eating away at itself, where capitalism controls every aspect and technocratic politics are helpless to offer a salutary escape route, that has now become, in Artaud’s words, a ‘poisonous edifice’.

Georges Bataille’s clairvoyance, especially in his article on ‘The psychological structure of fascism’ (1933), provided us with new ways to interpret how societies function, be they archaic, ancient or modern. Thus, his heritage, along with that of others, can help us think constructively today about the disaffection of impulses, the desire for rebellion, the relationship between capitalism and violence, the notion of freedom, of new models of development, etc.

Against the background of this context, I deal with such wide-ranging topics as sexuality, death, violence, oppression, sacrifice, and even madness, seeking to articulate not only the abject, but also the sublime. I believe that Painting, and Art in general, are at their origins, the expression of an Impossible that derives as much from vacuity as from surpassing limits.

The Torture Victim & the Saints of the Impossible

"One day, this living world will breed abundantly in my dead mouth."

"I think in the same way that a girl takes off her dress."

Georges Bataille

The Torture Victim & the Saints of the Impossible | oil on linen | 163 x 163 cm

The relationship between death and sexuality is at the heart of Georges Bataille's thought, and he saw the “highest point of the human spirit” in eroticism. The face of the young woman on the left is inspired by that of Colette Peignot who was, until her premature death, the writer's partner.

Contrapunctus XIV

“We don't usually take it into account, when we think or speak, but death will stop us in our tracks. All questions will ultimately remain unanswered, and I will evade the question as I impose silence.”

Georges Bataille

Contrapunctus XIV | oil on linen | 200 x 160 cm

An imaginary meeting of three historical figures: Glenn Gould, Judith of Bethulia and Georges Bataille. An imaginary encounter; an impossible encounter around the theme of incompleteness, with its central point being the musician's hand pointing up to the sky.

“There is no failure, there is death

which is not a failure

A death that is fiery but not

angry, that is happy, even, the opposite of failure.”

Georges Bataille

Eden #1

“.. Wazzo, men thumping on counter : throw cloth over my thighs ; tears, not jissom, boiling in my belly, tarantula's venom freezing my blood : pull feet, pull me into sun ;”

Eden, Eden, Eden (published in 1970), Pierre Guyotat

Excess is at the heart of Eden, Eden, Eden by Pierre Guyotat, a scandalously terrifying poetic work with universal and timeless scope, both through its textual style that overwhelms the reader to the point of asphyxiation and its content, set somewhere between ‘brothel and butchery’ (cf. the text of Michel Surya), which reveals the feverish, terrible and paradoxically 'blissful' enslavement of people excluded from mankind and against the background of the Algerian war of independence.

The passage I have chosen to illustrate, and from which I have distanced myself somewhat, briefly departs from a descriptive style to give the floor to one of the protagonists of the story, Khamssieh, who has been reduced to the condition of a bitch.

More info at : https://sebastiendubois.net/works/eden1

Dans la langue (Guyotat #1)

The second painting of this series is an image taken from the documentary entitled “52 minutes dans la langue” [52 minutes in language] by Ludwig Trovato on the artist Pierre Guyotat. The unusual framing technique used, cutting off the shot at nose level, shows only the lower part of his face, the mouth and lips; that is to say everything relating to the voice, the manner of speaking and phrasing from which his style of writing was so inexorably inseparable.

It is, however, the bewitching movements of his hands and fingers, similar to that of a musician, sometimes caressing, sometimes closing up into a clenched fist - as if he were trying, at times, to draw out from himself the right word, that would convey his meaning and also continue a never-ending melody - that fascinate and reveal the beauty of the actual moment of artistic creation.