Artist Franklin Bault's "Geometry of Light" exhibition blends art and science

From April 3 to May 15, 2024, as part of the Journées Arts & Culture de l'Enseignement Supérieur (JACES), the Richter University Library of the University of Montpellier will be hosting the "Géométrie de la lumière" exhibition. This exhibition combines physics and chemistry with the plastic arts, where light, the structure of atoms and molecules infuse the creative imagination of visual artist Franklin Bault. The exhibition opening takes place on Friday April 5 at 12:30 pm, in the lobby of the Richter University Library, in the presence of the artist.

This exhibition is the fruit of exchanges with scientists, cultural project managers and their teams, technicians and gallery owners, as well as a dialogue with a place: the university library. Open to all, this exhibition is also a meeting point for the public in the fields of science, sculpture, painting and, of course, artistic installation.

The starting point: a meeting between an artist and scientists

This art exhibition is rooted in artist Franklin Bault's attraction to sciences such as physics and chemistry. Indeed, this attraction leads him to create works closely linked to these two disciplines. It follows his meeting in 2022 with the COSA (connexion sciences arts) group, which brings together researchers in chemistry and biology, architects and staff from the Charles Gerhardt Montpellier Institute (ICGM), the Montpellier Cell Biology Research Center (CRBM), the Host-Pathogen Interactions Laboratory (LPHI) and the Montpellier National School of Architecture (ENSAM). This meeting with the COSA group led to Franklin Bault's first exhibition, as part of the Fête de la Science 2022, at the Charles Gerhardt Institute in Montpellier.

The exhibition and the artist in a nutshell

Franklin Bault's imagination is nourished by physics and chemistry. In this exhibition, the properties of light resonate with those of color. Through a series of sculptures or, more precisely, assemblages, the artist approaches the scientific hypotheses concerning the structure of atoms, summarized in Mendeleïev's table.

"My work is also often a reflection on how to relate an exhibition to a place. This relationship can be formal, but not exclusively so. In this sense, then, it is also a reflection in terms of installation, a relatively innovative approach in recent art." Franklin Bault.