Biography Sybaux sculpture

 copyright Justine Collomb photographer

SYBAUX sculptor. Born in 1966, living in Aubenas, France.

  •  Member of "Maison des Artistes" , French house of artists association
  •  Instagram:  @sybaux 
  •  Email: see "contact me" page

Creative process :

In 2000, I enrolled in a sculpture workshop where I explored various techniques and materials: aerated concrete, clay, wood, metal welding, limestone, plaster and so on. It was a good opportunity to experiment with assembly and direct carving techniques. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I carved a "prayer to the child" in a branch of lime tree, my first wooden work was born in the same place of my paternal ancestors and my daughter.
In 2004 I arrived in Ardèche, land of my maternal ancestors, with that special volcanic energy. This is where my encounter with the wood material was decisive, when I naturally saw a form emerging from a piece of wood. So we took out the tools of my paternal grandfather (he was a non professional woodworker whose workshop's smell will remain forever engraved in my olfactory memory). My dad sharpened the gouges and scissors and off we went. 

Once my two ancestral sides united, sculptures could spring...
The garage under the house became my workshop and an old wooden workbench the support of my transformations.The piece of art titled  "Meditation" took shape in direct carving, an accidental fall that I accepted made me understand from the beginning that there is no repentance possible in this practice. That suits me well. With the sound of my tools on the wood, making the only sounds, I remove the rotten parts and dig around, I sand the layers of bark or sapwood, I follow the grain of the wood and let myself be guided by the path of the sap and the shapes present in the material. I refine the lines because as soon as I touch on one side I need to balance on the other, and little by little, Nature's intended shape is revealed. I don't decide to print a shape, I just read the lines and volumes of wood. I'm just a revealer, not afraid of failing.
In 2004, I also started practicing Qi Gong, a Chinese energy art that opened up other receptive perspectives. It really seems to me that these two practices have been feeding each other for 20 years now. For me, sculpture is like a kind of meditation, a state of emptiness that allows a resurrection of wood to take place, perhaps thanks to its internal vibration. An intangible, energetic, precious, correspondence between the wood and myself takes shape, far from the mind and the willpower. Intuitively, I would place this link at the level of the Dan Tian or the heart, even if it involves the hands intelligence and generosity. A unity created between matter and something very mysterious in me: the magic of creation.

It's a pleasure to work and sweat on this material, to live a real hand-to-hand combat with wood, wood shavings and dust, the bigger the pieces are ! The need to sculpt is part of me and frustration is great when I can't do it. During carving, time is fixed in an intense present, I feel very alive. I collect stumps, trunks, branches from my surroundings during walks: chestnut, mulberry, plane tree, cherry tree, oak... generally not carving wood ! I'm also given some, so I select those who have an interesting shape to exploit. In 2010 I started to carve my friends' fig tree, a tree as tall as me that had refused to be cut in half. Passers-by stop and watch the work being done. One of them, Diop, said to me: "You're a sculptor" when he saw me facing this world that I called "the human condition", and then "Lilith" when I understood by talking to a friend who this second woman was. This words calls me an artist, I was proud because I am a self-taught one. Then comes the recognition of professional artists, who became friends wanting to exchange works with mine: Ghyslain Bertholon and Bang Hai Ja for instance. I was very happy and honoured.

My sculptures all seem to be connected to the stages of my intimate life.  By which mystery can they be so mirror-like? What a strange process from the most intimate of the creative act to the most universal, the sharing with the public of the beauty and sensuality of the very feminine curves and shapes that are shown in my pieces of art. I've categorized my sculptures into three series: Concepts, Mythologies and Mutants, but everyone can see what they want, out of the workshop, they are yours! 

Exhibitions:

           

  •  With photographer Paul-émile Objar at Tuilerie BOSSY, Métiers d'Art, 13120 Gardanne, December 2022 the 10th & 11th

                 

  • Personnal exhibition at "Hautsegur's castle" Meyras, April 2017

          

  • Group exhibition in March 2015 at Espace Envol, Privas:

            

  • Meeting at the artist's studio, week-end organized by the Rhône and Alps Region, in October 2014:

            

  • LILITH artwork shown at "Espace envol, F.O.L. de l’Ardèche", March 2010, for a collective exhibition of female artists.

          

Public order:

  • From Aubenas's city, November 2012, public order of a "circle of life tree", cedar with roots scuplted on site (in front of a nursery, a leisure center, a secondary school, a square and a park).

             with my friend BANG Hai Ja, corean painter

Writings about my work:

  • Book REMARQUABLES (Remarkable) / SEPTéditions / May 2024   

 

 

  • Over the wood

    The hands with the eyes have always caressed and kneaded the desired flesh.
    Or vice versa?
    On the surface...
    Sylvie enters, with an infinite determined softness, into the secret skins of the wood, then emerge sensual curves of strata unknown to the eyes, to the touch, to the imagination itself. 


    As the veins go by, the decision to stop there or there is a matter of deep intuition... of birth... then the surface becomes light-sensitive epidermis.

    Following the grain of the wood reveals the form, which is always imbued with sensuality and emotion in its raw state.
    For each work, we ask ourselves, how is this possible?
    But yes, this "investigation" into the depths of the material reveals an unknown and so precise complicity... 

    Then comes the confrontation with the workof art, the certainty that we are in front of the greatest intimacy ever revealed. As the hands wander through the light reflections, beware of the perception of a tête-à-tête, without being initiated into it... This emotion is overwhelming.

    Is it the artist laid bare...?

          By Lorenzo Piqueras, Architect Museographer, January 2024.

 

  • Subtle palpitations
    The sap of the tree is long gone and its bark is no better off. Farewell, lichens, mosses and worms! Dismembered, lying under insatiable bushes, a headless trunk was thrown into the nettles after being disdained from chimneys. It is with him that SyBaux has chosen to dialogue. A strange council, tete-a-tete on tiptoe, until little by little silhouettes and showers of embers emerge from its bowels. A subtle incandescence that ignores the family trees and their branches to which the disappeared are hung, most often in rows of onions. The sculptures, on the other hand, mischievously descend from their pedestals to meet passers-by. The tree torn from the forest is surprisingly reborn to move human forests. The tree of life emerges, as one goes to a fountain, from the shavings finely chiseled by a sorceress of subtle palpitations, SyBaux.

          By Gilbert AUZIAS, president of F.O.L. Ardèche, June 2013.

Trainings:

  • Evening classes at Toulouse's school of fine arts with artist Rémy Peyranne.
  • Sculpture workshops in Cahors (Lot) with artist Eric Rouvre.
  • Sculpture and modeling workshops in Aubenas (Ardèche) with artist Berit Hildre.
  • self-taught in wood carving