“Observer, flâneur, philosopher, call him what you will; but you will certainly be led, in characterizing this artist, to bestow upon him an epithet that you could not apply to the painter of eternal things, or at least more enduring things, of heroic or religious things. Sometimes he is a poet; more often he approaches the novelist or the moralist; he is the painter of circumstance and all that it suggests of the eternal.”

With these words, published in a newspaper in 1863, Baudelaire painted the portrait of the painter of modern life. 70 years later, this flâneur still strolls, this time recounted by Walter Benjamin, in the fragile Europe between the wars. It was almost a century ago, the flâneurs continued to wander, not only in a weakened Europe but also far beyond, in a world that became accessible even in its most remote corners. Guillaume Barth is part of this lineage of flâneurs.

From the salt deserts of Bolivia to the reindeer people of Mongolia, from Quebec to Senegal passing through Iran, Guillaume Barth follows an extraordinary trajectory, which discourages a “classic” reading of the young artist’s journey – school / diploma / residency / exhibition / publication… – because this journey is interspersed with mysterious moments, closer to anthropology than to artistic practice.

These moments kept secret by the artist feed into an approach that willingly looks towards the spiritual while being embodied in simple materials that also include a dimension of fragility by inviting salt, living trees, or even pieces of fabric. (…)

Estelle Pietrzyk, Director of MAMCS Strasbourg, excerpt from the presentation of the Axis Mundi, headquarters of the ARTE channel 2018.

Guillaume Barth was born in 1985 in Colmar, he lives and works between Sélestat in Alsace and Amatlán de Quetzalcoatl in Mexico. He graduated from the National Studio of Contemporary Arts of Le Fresnoy in 2021, graduated from the Art option of the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg in 2012. He is the laureate of the Martel Catala Foundation prize for the New Forest book project in 2023, laureate of the Talents Contemporains prize of the François Schneider Foundation in Wattwiller (FR) in 2019, laureate of the Bullukian Foundation prize in Lyon (FR) in 2017, as well as the Théophile Schuler prize (FR) in 2015. He participated in the 61st Salon de Montrouge in Paris (FR) in 2016.

His works have been presented in different countries, in Europe, but also in Iran, Canada, China, and recently in Mexico. Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger presents the artist for the first time at Art Paris 2024, and devotes a solo exhibition to her, Elina, from April 26 to June 28, 2025. This exhibition will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Elina sculpture (Bolivia), with a publication in Aymara. Guillaume Barth takes part in the Issy Biennial, from September 17 to November 9, 2025 at Issy-les-Moulineaux, and Chaumont-photo-sur-Loire, from November 23, 2025 to February 22, 2026 at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire.

My ideas are constructed from different places, have original forms that seem to diverge from each other, but upon closer inspection, their invisibility overlaps in a single whole. For a little over a decade, the formal and semantic lines of force that emerge from my sculptures, simple shapes and shapes of nature, patterns of the sphere, cycle, and opening, phenomenon of absorption and visual reflection, geographical exploration, realized fictions, transcultural narratives, inscription in landscapes, appearance and disappearance, blooming and rooting attempt to make sense through an approach as sensitive, reflexive, and artifactful. It is characterized, before any gesture, by an attentional capacity to the elements of the Living world.

Guillaume Barth, 2023

https://guillaumebarth.com/en