Formed at Beaux-Arts in France, then at ECAL in Switzerland, Antoine Goudard's early works are at first sight similar to abstract sculpture.
And yet, these forms evoke movements, archaic forms, fossils alive, are beings that are difficult to identify.
The material itself is misleading, what seems to be a canvas is leather, and the artist has carefully covered it with paint, accentuating the nuances, the roughness of the veining of the skin and the covering of a form, which gives itself by hiding itself.
These sculptures actually show hiding identities, envelopes and the gesture of the sculptor aims then at the paradox
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The sculpture that usually occupies the space, creates real forms, in volume, and not images, seems here to give to see beings who seek to disappear, to transform themselves, to withdraw a part of them- same, with perhaps their creator.
This paradoxical gesture is at the heart of the work of Antoine Goudard.
Of this central space, Antoine Goudard takes forward his work according to several axes. These, and this progress, create artist's figure which would be rather a researcher, exploring tracks and playing with them.
Starting from the space, a series of works seem to bear the trace, the absence, when another approaches the multiple as opposed to the unique.
Production, which is eventually serial, questions identity, body and portrait, or animal physiognomy.
All signal an effacement of the artistic gesture, and expect from the eye of the spectator that he completes the works by rubbing them.
" Borrowing esthetic codes inherited from the popular culture and the rites of the old civilizations, I fascinate for the question of the sublimation. "