JEAN-LOUIS VINCENDEAU
Born in 1949 in Gétigné in the Nantes countryside, Jean-Louis Vincendeau studied ‘Aesthetics and Art Sciences’ at the Sorbonne and wrote a doctoral thesis on "the poetics of wastelands", starting from the Forges de Trignac, a large industrial wasteland near Saint-Nazaire.
He taught at the University of Paris XIII and lead seminars at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d'Ulm on ‘Friches et soutènements’ (wastelands and supports), ‘Gardens and landscape" at the ENS rue d'Ulm, as well as ‘Friches de la pensée et jardins philosophiques’ (Wastelands of thinking and philosophical gardens). He was a garden expert with the National Commission for Historic Monuments at the Ministry of Culture. He undertook research in the urban landscape in partnership with Maurice Godelier's CREDO laboratory at CNRS. Since then he has had the opportunity to meet and associate with contemporary art figures such as Nils-Udo, Raymond Hains and Giuseppe Penone.
He was the co founder of the research lab Cabinet des Ecarts Singuliers à l’ESADHAR Le Havre-Rouen, as well as Currer Bell College, a collaboration with Transtechnology Research at Plymouth University.
He has been drawing and painting since childhood. His work is very personal and does not belong to any recent trend. Art critics have described his works as "new metaphysical painting" (Philippe Piguet and Jean-Michel Phéline). To this must be added interventions in landscape, installations and digital video, which he calls "filmed poems".
His minute, often temporary installations, constitute, in all their ephemerality, beautiful poetic reflections, often referring to literature read, or art seen. Not devoid of a sense of humour, they are made with found materials, whether manmade or natural, and carefully positioned in tiny theatrical surroundings, usually against a background of one or two strong colours. In fact, they seem to be like visual haiku’s, inviting us to take a moment, sit still, watch and wonder.