Jerome Btesh

1968

How does one sculpt without being a sculptor?

In releasing your work from yourself.
Rule number 1: develop an idea of the sculpture.
Rule number 2: copy this idea just until it is no longer recognizable. Organize a meeting between its desires and the surprises of the material. Enthuse before the unexpected. Applaud chance. This is what is called the child's apprenticeship.

J. BTESH is the example of this apprenticeship. The brute master of the art, undominated by any academic technique: He knows perfectly not to shape, refuses with virtuosity to hew the stone, excels in mistakes, does anything but paint with his paintbrushes. Each day he perfects the art of unlearning.

J. BTESH thus unuses objects, treats noble materials with a lack of formality while revering the ordinary, renders invisible that which jumps before the eyes, voids the visible, fixes his attention on the disregardable, multiplies the singular, disobeys the laws of gravity, goes against the norms, dupes those who dupe us. Unceasingly, he writes without words, carves up the emptiness, unfolds that which is smooth, complicates the simple. His rage against the materials is that of a man who takes apart the real to better a...