RISK AREAS (2015-2020) est le projet artistique qui est né du roman Zones à risques (éditions Inculte, 2021)

Le catalyseur de ce projet est le roman Zones à risques, de l'auteur et artiste visuel Olivier Bodart. Il s'agit d'une histoire fictive basée sur des catastrophes naturelles réelles qui se sont produites aux États-Unis. Dans l'histoire, Mat, le personnage principal, travaille comme expert en catastrophes naturelles pour le compte de la société gouvernementale FEMA. Pour diverses raisons, Mat a du mal à se rendre en personne sur les lieux des catastrophes. Afin de produire néanmoins ses rapports d’expertise, il décide de créer des scènes de catastrophes en miniatures, dans des boîtes en bois et d’en tirer ensuite des macrophotographies pour obtenir les images nécessaires à ses faux compte-rendus (qu'il fait passer pour authentiques à la FEMA).

Juste avant d'achever la dernière partie de ce roman, Bodart a décidé de se glisser dans la peau du personnage principal et de réaliser réellement les boîtes et les images que son personnage crée dans le roman. Mais contrairement à Mat dans le livre, Bodart s'est rendu sur les quatre sites des catastrophes et a rassemblé des matériaux pour réaliser son projet. Cette entreprise a abouti à la création de 52 boîtes-sculptures et de 104 images qui constituent une le projet d’art Risk Areas.

The catalyst to this project is the novel “Zones à risques” (Éditions Inculte, 2021), by author and visual artist Olivier Bodart. It’s a fictional story comprised of factual natural disasters which occurred around the United States. In the story, Mat, the main character, works as a natural disaster investigator for FEMA. For various reasons, Mat has trouble to go to the disaster sites in person. In order to complete his work reports, he decides to create miniature disaster scenes in shadow boxes and do macro photography to obtain images needed for his fake reports (of which he passes off to the agency as authentic).

Just before completing the final part of the novel, Bodart decided to step into the shoes of the main character, and actualize the shadow box scenes and images which produced a massive body of work. Unlike the character in the book, he traveled to the four factual disaster sites and collected materials for the project. The undertaking resulted in the creation of 52 shadow boxes and 104 images that is a stand alone visual art exhibition.

IMPERIAL (2020-2021) est le projet artistique qui est né du roman Après moi le désert (éd. Inculte, 2023)

Imperial est le nom du comté des États-Unis situé à l’extrême sud de l’État de Californie, dans le désert de Sonora. Faiblement peuplé, très aride, il possède néanmoins un lac artificiel, mais celui-ci est pollué et son évaporation représente une vraie catastrophe écologique. Habiter ce désert demande une certaine volonté, ou bien une certaine inventivité.

Le projet IMPERIAL évoque l’année 2020 qu’Olivier Bodart a passée dans ce comté, bloqué entre les quatre murs de la nouvelle maison qu’il rénove. Pandémie, incendies, pollution. Tout l’oblige à rester confiné en plein milieu du plus grand désert d’Amérique du Nord. Privé de mouvement, il met alors en place un projet qui laisserait entrevoir une possibilité d’évasion : tandis que les éléments naturels de l’extérieur s’invitent peu à peu à l’intérieur de la bâtisse en réfection, l’artiste va reconstituer au sol, la carte en 3D du comté d’Imperial. Un tas de sable venu s’amasser sur le carrelage de la cuisine va se muer en dune, une pierre échouée sur le parquet du salon sera une falaise. Ce nouveau panorama à ras du sol va ensuite devenir le terrain d’une déambulation photographique, le décor propice à une escapade fantasmagorique et artistique à travers les paysages de cette vallée recomposée.

Imperial is the name of a county in the United States located at the far south end of California, in the Sonoran Desert. The sparsely populated area is very arid, although it does contain an immense polluted artificial lake. The evaporation of this lake represents a real ecological disaster. Life in this desert requires a certain will, or even a certain ingenuity.

IMPERIAL, the project, describes the year 2020 that Olivier Bodart spent in this county, blocked between the four walls of the new house he is renovating. A pandemic, fires, and pollution. Everything forces him to stay confined in the middle of North America's largest desert. Deprived of movement, he then sets up a project that would suggest a possibility of escape: while the natural elements of the exterior are gradually invited inside the building being repaired, the artist reproduces on the ground, a 3D map of Imperial County. A pile of sand gathered on the kitchen floor will become a dune, a stone washed up on the living room floor transformed into a cliff. This new panorama at ground level becomes the scene of a photographic stroll, the setting favorable to a phantasmagorical and artistic escapade through the landscapes of a reconstructed valley.

Risk Areas, Shadow box sculptures & photographs, Evanston Art Center, Chicago, USA, April-May 2022

Between Land and Sea, public sculpture, Glenalade Cultural Center, Prince-Edward-Island, Canada, June 2022

Imperial, Shadow box sculptures & photographs, The Guild Gallery, Charlottetown, Canada, Aug-Sept 2021

Risk Areas, Photographs, Rare Nest Gallery, Chicago, USA, May-June 2020

Beating Earth, Paintings and engravings, L’Estuaire Gallery, Paris, France, 2010

L’Absente, Printmaking, Les Cordelières Gallery, Paris, 2008

Moving-Loop Project, Etching, Bartok Gallery, Paris, France, 2007

Across Land Project, Paintings, Chapelle Saint-Vincent, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, France, 2004

Small Noises Project, Paintings, Micro-Gigantic Gallery, Brussel, Belgium, 2002

RISK AREAS exhibition catalog

"Every time I went to one of these places, I collected things related to the drama that had happened there. I collected materials such as earth, wood, stone, root, ash, etc... which I kept in little glass jars. They were, for me, eloquent. First of all, because they were tangible elements from these tragedies that I had connected with. Elements that would eventually disappear over time, and also because these materials were proof that I had been there, the result of a certain personal journey [...]. "

"Eventually, I would use them as the main materials for the sculptures and photographs project that developed alongside my literary project. The visual artwork was conceived by reflection upon the pivotal character of my novel, Mat. In the fiction novel, he had just acquired a somewhat unfavorable gift in the form of a well-paid job where the function of the position petrified him: having to go to draft expert reports of dramatic scenes related to natural disasters for FEMA. The aforementioned disasters being actual and true as the basis for a fictional account. Mat was literally paralyzed, unable to move and perform this task; avoiding it by opting for an outlandish alternative: faking expert reports by documenting unauthentic accounts of the events and creating bogus images. To do this, he began to make small wooden boxes in which he organized scenes of devastation in miniature form with the little information that the FEMA management had given him. Names of places, people, and testimonials from early newspaper articles. From these boxes he photographed the scenes in macro form and invented the stories to go along with them, all formulated the exact same way in which actual expert FEMA reports were made[...]. "

"It came to me as a revelation that I had to make these boxes. In reality. That I should design and build them just as the character Mat had done. But in my own case, using the materials harvested from these non-fiction disaster scenes. I would put myself in the shoes of my fictional character and design these boxes as he did, and from there I would create the photographs as he did he for his expert reports. I would plunge my arm into the troubled waters of my fiction to extract these shadow boxes and bring them to the surface of reality, I would slide them silently along the dark waterline between these two worlds [...]. "

Olivier Bodart

Risk Areas, Art book (complete project), limited edition, 135p