Jean-Marc Bustamante: Beautifuldays

Edited and with interview by Eckhard Schneider. Text by Christine Montalbetti.

Jean-Marc Bustamante, born in Toulouse, France, in 1952, was known as a photographer before he became a sculptor: he exhibited his photographs at the Tate in 1998-99, and works in both media at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, in preparation for his 2003 representation of France at the Venice Biennale. Bustamante continues to exhibit both objects and images, and says of this portfolio of sculptural work, which seems at first to make his biggest break yet with photography, “All of the works here have something to do with photographics.” Indeed, the bright swaths of color on transparent material share some properties with glass-plate negatives, filtering light, registering shapes and shadows on the wall behind them. A solid album of recent work, this volume includes exhibition photographs as well as notes and sketches, and documents work both interior and exterior, including a light installation that put Bustamante’s mark all over Austria’s Kunsthaus Bregenz. “Given the fact that [they] had committed the entire building to me, it seemed obvious that I should display my presence from the outside. The display is a signal. It reveals itself progressively as the 200 lights come on, until all of them are ablaze.”