Sébastien Bonin

Alkinois is pleased to present “Tcharendar” by Sébastien Bonin. Tcharendar refers to the “day of the bread,” a recurring moment within the cyclical economy of rural life, where action belongs less to the event than to repetition. In this exhibition, Sébastien Bonin derives objects from rural craftsmanship — tools, agricultural devices, domestic forms — approached as carriers of memory and transmission. In its foundations there is a structural principle: the multiple. Forms appear in pairs, duplicates, or series. This repetition is neither decorative nor industrial; it is necessary. A shoe implies its counterpart, a pattern calls for another, a gesture exists only because it can be repeated. The multiple ensures the survival and circulation of forms across time.

The sculptures displace utilitarian objects from their original function. Shoes become bear's feet; mountain crampons are isolated as autonomous forms; hay-beating sticks, stacked cones of unleavened bread, and straw mats used in cheese-making are cast in bronze. The material introduces tension: it fixes and monumentalises forms originally conceived for wear, replacement, and cyclical use.

The paintings extend this logic through duplication and fragmentation. Fences subjected to the movement of the sun, wooden shoemaking patterns, textile tools, and elemental gestures are layered within structured compositions. Human figures — sharpening, carving — function as operators of gestures, rather than portraits, embedded in a chain of know-how. Preservation here is not nostalgic; it oscillates between continuity and reintroduction, between what is transmitted uninterrupted and what returns through rediscovery and reactivation.