Clément Bedel: final glimmer, first breath

Clément Bedel creates hybrid compositions that capture suspended moments between collapse and rebirth. Inhabiting the unstable space between erosion and regeneration, his paintings depict a world in flux, where the residue of destruction and the possibility of renewal coexist, unresolved yet inseparable. His vibrant, incisive works capture these suspended moments where the resilience of nature challenges the notion of extinction. Streams of intense colour, often symbolic of pollution, merge with plants, trees, and brutalist structures caught in perpetual transformation. These metabolising scenes disrupt conventional notions of linear time, resonating with philosopher Timothy Morton’s concept of hyper-objects; entities so vast in scale and duration that they evade ordinary perception.

Bedel recalls natural spaces marked by abrasion; places where human impact is inscribed into the landscape. What first appears as ecological devastation reveals a different kind of vitality: oil-slick hues shifting across water, moss taking root on concrete, the shimmer of petrol catching the light. Rather than framing these moments as environmental warnings, Bedel approaches them as sites of perception where toxicity and radiance meet to form a new visual language for the Anthropocene. In this new body of work, the artist’s process of sanding, scraping, and cutting through layers of paint mirrors the corrosion of the environment itself as etched surfaces that bear their wounds openly yet glimmer with unexpected life. Rivulets of intense colour, suggestive of pollutants, merge with   vegetal forms, mineral traces, and architectural structures. Here, pollution and extinction are not singular events but diffuse conditions - seen in the slow persistence of moss beside the fleeting shimmer of chemical light, in the heavy solidity of concrete dissolving into airy washes of colour.

These paintings, existential in scope, speak of humanity’s precarious position through the intimate, embodied  practice of painting. They articulate a recognition that our place in the world is neither dominant nor marginal, but woven into cycles that exceed comprehension. Bedel invites us into this suspension, offering no stable ground but instead an ability to perceive a fragile kind of radiance where decay and renewal unfold together.

About the artist: 

Clément Bedel (b. 1993, Strasbourg) is a French painter based in Vienna, Austria. After completing a Master’s degree in 2017 at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy, where he studied under Nina Childress, he went on to continue his training at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, where he lived and worked from 2016 to 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include WUK, Vienna (2024); Eisenwerk Frauenfeld, Switzerland (2023); Galerie Hestia, Belgrade (2023) and Galerie Hestia, Belgrade (2023). Bedel has participated in numerous group exhibitions across France, Germany, and Serbia, and has undertaken residencies in Istanbul (2020) and Leipzig (2019).