Interview with Envie D’Art gallery and artist Edouard Buzon

Ahead of the Autumn fair season, we caught up with one of our long-time, Paris-based exhibitors Yann Bombard, Owner and Co-Founder of  Envie d’Art  gallery and artist  Edouard Buzon.

Collaborators for over 15 years, read on to find out more about non-directive collaboration, artworks travelling the world and the importance of listening to their international collectors.  

YANN BOMBARD, OWNER AND CO-FOUNDER, ENVIE D’ART, PARIS 

What is your relationship with Edouard Buzon like, and how has it changed your business over the past decades? 

We met  Edouard  in 2005; he came into the gallery one day with a painting under his arm… We organised his first exhibition and he quickly became one of the gallery’s leading artists. Our first exhibition in 2007 was the Affordable Art Fair Battersea London, and by the evening of the opening we had sold all of Edouard’s works! Throughout more than 15 years of collaboration his success has never wavered, and the gallery has grown with him. 

Can you tell us about the journey of an artwork through Envie d’Art, from first hearing about the artists concept, to the piece reaching a customer’s wall? 

First of all, we regularly discuss with our artists, giving them our comments (“I don’t like this new series so much”, “you should try other supports” …); we try to engage in a kind of collaboration without ever being directive. On their side the artists submit their experiments to us to get our opinion; whatever it is we always try to present them, on the internet, in the gallery or if we are really enthusiastic, directly at a fair. And if an artwork is selected for a fair, it goes in a crate and can sometimes go around the world, passing through Affordable Art Fairs in Amsterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, and then New York! 

Similar to the Affordable Art Fair, you believe that “art is not reserved for experienced connoisseurs and collectors but open to all” – how has exhibiting with our fairs enhanced your mission and allowed you to connect with a diverse audience from around the world? 

We created the gallery in 2001 with the same credo: to make art less elitist, and that is why we feel so comfortable in an Affordable Art Fair. We take part every year in almost all the Affordable Art Fairs and thanks to this worldwide presence our artists have acquired a very motivating international notoriety for themselves.  
 
Affordable Art Fair allows us to meet many buyers almost everywhere, and some of them become very loyal: one of them, an English artist, owns 25 works by Edouard Buzon! It is very rewarding for the artist and for us to create such a relationship of trust.  

I also like the diversity of Affordable Art Fair visitors: some buy their first work; others are seasoned collectors who sometimes have a collection so structured that they have employees to manage it… and own works by some of today’s greatest artists; yet they retain the curiosity and passion to come and discover new talent at Affordable Art Fairs. 

EDOUARD BUZON, ARTIST 

Hi Edouard, can you tell us about your creative process?  

I need to appropriate things, images, and to do so with my hands, armed with the colours I make myself from pigments. I would say that I organise improbable encounters between visual elements that could not meet in real life, and I integrate them into more abstract landscapes, orchestrated by flat areas of paint. As for humans and animals, they always present themselves from behind so that the viewer has complete freedom to identify these creatures. In order to finalize the work, I polish the surface of the works for weeks, layer after layer, to give them a special lacquer and shine that brings out the colours. 

Do you picture your work placed within a specific space when creating it? 

When I create a piece, I do so without thinking of what environment it will live in. I simply create with a vision for the piece itself, where I want to go and what elements I want to change for example. However, working for so many years alongside galleries, fairs and collectors, I have gained a lot of knowledge on how people display my work, how it fits in different contexts and therefore I think that has an influence on how I create at the end of the day. I always hear what gallerists and collectors have to say about my work and I adapt accordingly when I think it will work with my vision. 

What are some of the most rewarding aspects of working with Envie d’Art? Has your practice changed at all since joining a gallery that is able to show your work to such an international audience?  

Of course, my work has evolved a lot since we first met 15 years ago. But I believe even though I have moved on to explore different themes, I have also stayed true to my style and the way I work with photography, with pigments and varnishes.

Having such an international audience has changed my approach, as I have noticed along with Yann and Cathy that American collectors for instance are drastically different in their taste to European or Asian collectors. They do not appreciate the same things in the same way, and it is interesting to explore in one way or another. 

We hope you enjoyed reading about Yann Bombard and  Edouard Buzon‘s collaboration as much as we enjoy having them at the fair. To view some of Edouard’s works ahead of the fair, follow the button below. Make sure to visit their stand at the fair to get a closer look at Edouard’s works and to discover the other artists represented by Envie d’Art gallery.