Damien Francois
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Damien François came to S12 as a workshop manager in early 2012. He assisted all the artists in residence in S12, in addition to working on his own art during his residency periods. The result of his residency was exhibited in the Gallery in a solo exhibition called Patience during July 2012. He was assisted by the artist Teresa Longva, during his residency. The result of his work in S12 was again exhibited in the group exhibition Composites, 3 views on glass, with Stine Bidstrup and Jeffrey Sarmiento in 2013.
“Being in S12 as a manager of the workshop and as an artist in residence, gave me the opportunity to develop my knowledge of the physical and sensitive properties of glass. It became possible through my own experiments with the material and experience when helping other artists. Teaching and showing amateurs the basic processes when making glass was a rich experience for me as well. This work was an essential step, and allowed me to “abstract” the material and to access its nature.“
François has a BA from The Danish Design School, Center for Glass and Ceramics, Bornholm, Denmark and an MA in Science, Technology and Health from Joseph Fourier University in France. François has shown his work in France, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Germany. In early 2012 he received the ”Talente Prize” for his interesting and experimental way of working with glass. His work has been published in New Glass Review, and is a part of collections, galleries and museums in France, Italy, USA, Norway and Austria.
François ́ work is based on the exploration and the exploitation of the multitude of possibilities that glass offers. His work aims to approach issues of perplexity and uncertainty. Several bodies of work, informed and influenced by each other, compose his investigations which can be familiar yet remain foreign at the same time. He is using centuries old glass making traditions to express his own perspective within a contemporary context.
His exhibition Patience was highly structured and showed the result of his continuous investigations of what glass can be and at his role as an artist, as “maker” and “observer”. The work he was exhibiting had come to life in diverse ways, but they all had a common denominator: the notion of “time”. These works were later exhibited in Denmark, Sweden and France.
Today Damien François lives and works in France where he has established his own workshop. He continues to explore glass in all its diversity and is at present developing a new body of work based on his experiments.