Sébastien Dosantos Capouet

Espacio Báltico presents the new exhibition by Sébastien Dosantos Capouet, C O , M A.

C O , M A is a visual sequence — a pictorial dance between bodies and gestures, a moment suspended in time: a reality breaking into fiction. To decipher, or not to decipher; to understand, or to let go. The fate of gestures within images is both uncertain and inherent.

Sébastien Dosantos Capouet’s gaze reveals desires and visions translated into visual sequences. The mechanism of his actions and his ability to perceive image after image appear effortless; it seems as though he proceeds with absolute naturalness. Yet this mechanism is only superficially simple: in truth, it is a complex process that, while unfolding fluidly, holds tensions and contradictions. The understanding of movements and forms follows a logic distinct from, though no less demanding than, the language of movement expressed in his work.

Within the images persist reasons why it remains impossible to fully decode a bodily gesture: the factor of time is absent, and the task of imagining the sequences conceived by the artist falls upon the viewer. Such challenges are inherent to the act of interpreting images in a single instant. Sébastien’s work cannot be defined as abstraction, but rather as a detailed and sensitive depiction of what we perceive as we move through it—inviting us to exercise a detailed gaze. This is the great opportunity in his work: to perceive the image as movement and as sequence.

The layering of gestures in everyday life and in space—the repeated movements of labor, and those represented in artworks—expresses a shared sense of bodily belonging. Sébastien has choreographed this carefully and thoughtfully, constructing his work from a cinematic perspective that privileges sequence and the rhythm of the moving image. Thus, this shared multidisciplinary reflection, and the legacy of mimetic arts, while transcending traditional notions of imitation and representation, keeps alive the language of the body, revealing its mutable nature and its constant pursuit of dialogue.

— Anna Dusi