ALEXANDRE BAVARD AT THE JUSTKIDS ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM IN SAN JUAN

Art Fair Exhibition + Performance Projects

Location: San Juan, PR
Artist: Alexandre Bavard
Service: Proposal development, curation, production, artist representation.

Global creative house JUSTKIDS hosted French contemporary artist Alexandre Bavard as the winter guest of its artist in residence program in San Juan Puerto Rico. While on the island, the multidisciplinary artist developed new works spanning his Neo-archeological sculptures, print works, costumes and textiles as well as his performative practice. The culmination of these new explorations and body of work was on view during the second edition of MECA International Art Fair, celebrated November 16th till the 19th at the Ancient Spanish Navy Arsenals Museum in Old San Juan.

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The urban, social and phycological context of the island inspired Bavard’s visual and performative work, creating important connections. About his residency in Puerto Rico, Alexander Bavard commented: “San Juan is a city of explorers and crossing, which is, a year after Hurricane Maria, re-imagining itself. Exactly like the work of an artists is to me. Its building new concepts, looking for new materials to develop in all ways. It’s also an exchange and collaboration with the dance company La Trinchera towards the adaptation of my performance. Its the magic of the Arts and the encounters it provokes beyond all frontiers.”

Beyond eyeing the artists’s new body of work created in the island at MECA ART FAIR, attendees could enjoy Bavard's adaptation of his performance ‘BULKY - GUANG DONG’ presented by Justkids and in collaboration with San Juan Dance collective La Trinchera. The piece was choreographed by Alexandre Bavard and its original music composed by Hugo Doustet and Mosa 87 (alias Bavard himself). With his uncanny choreographic performance Bulky Bavard (who graduated with a MFA at Les Beaux Arts de Lyon and L’ecole Boulle in Paris, which he mixed with 15 years of Graffiti) reinterprets the tag gestures through a dance system, interrogating the problematic of street art exposed in galleries and institutional spaces.

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The work produced in the Old San Juan encompasses his Neo-Archeologie sculpture series created from found objects that the artist molded in the streets and reworked at the Justkids Studio to give them a futuristic appearance. Coming straight from China to Puerto Rico he also composed large canvases and installation made of counterfeit materials and fabrics, over-referencing and ‘appropriating’ with humor iconic brands such as Balenciaga, whose logo was itself a conspicuous take on the Bernie Sanders campaign logo, and which in Bavard's world became BalenciaQa or Champin for Champion.