For Roland Baladi
I often said in reviews over the course of the last fifteen years how good,
one should think, is the work of Roland Baladi.
From his marble sculptures to his videos, in his cathodic paintings
as well as his solar sculptures, Roland Baladi has never wavered.
His way is a straight line, direct to the shiver.
What he creates is manifestly beautiful. We don't respond to his marble sculptures simply because they represent some sublime passing of Duchamp's Ready-mades,
we are drawn to them because they get us trembling with desire, as if for a desirable, sentient being. We don't laugh at his videos because we discover some equation of subjective codes, but because his characters are the real fools of our times.
They only exist to make us cry.
We exclaim at those faces chiseled by the course of the sun
not because they accomplish the wedding of art and concept
under the auspices of modernity, we are simply dazzeled to see "death at work"
as we never saw it in the movies, even in Cocteau's films.
Baladi, finally, is an awake dreamer who has found at least three ways
to imprint his dreams on our side of the mirror.
Jean-Paul Fargier, 10/7/91
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