Jean-Baptiste Boutin, whose artist name is Gibus, is a woodcarver working and living in Gironde (France).
"Follow me because I don't know where I'm going. If there is one thing I am looking for without really knowing where to find it, it is the only truth that counts: the one we owe to ourselves.
My work questions our human condition, our questions and the courage to face them. It seems to me that there is no other way than the one of sincerity at the first degree, it is necessary to be essential, obvious, and my pieces are stripped to the point of translating a hard and unvarnished existential truth. I leave only what is necessary, I conceptualize to the point of the question without a word too many. But if the background is heavy, the form is light, raw, frank and without detour. So if life removes the superficial to appear raw and cruel, I remove the wood shavings to let the matter express its truth. The mistakes are written there, the blows of the blade, those that shape us. I remove what is too much until our eyes can no longer ignore the question asked. And the piece is over, I have no answer. To my great surprise, it appears to me that the naked truth is poetry. Jean-Baptise Boutin alias Gibus
