Antoine Brodin

Migrations, 2017
Blown and sandblasted glass, 120x450cm

Born in France in 1980
Lives and works in St André de Cruzières (Ardèche), France

Finalist for the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main® in 2011 and winner of the Prix L'Œuvre de la Fondation des Ateliers d'Art de France in 2017, Antoine Brodin brings to life a fantastic bestiary: birds, anemones and marine mammals in glass lace that are like sacred remnants of the richness of living things and bear witness to their fragile balances. 

Antoine Brodin experienced the violence of an apprenticeship in body painting, followed by the Beaux-Arts, marked by the institutionalization of creation. After a serious accident in which he had to learn to walk again, Antoine Brodin took up the art of stained glass in churches before training in glassblowing. While studying at the Centre Européen de Recherches et Formation aux Arts Verriers (CERFAV) in Vannes-le-Châtel near Nancy, he met Franco-American glassblower Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert, whom he assisted for 4 years. His support, along with that of the duo formed by Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg, opened up opportunities for him on a European scale. Appointed head of La Compagnie des Verriers' glass workshop in 2013, Antoine Brodin then set up his studio in a former elementary school in the Ardèche.

His figurative works, at the crossroads of reality, dream and science fiction, draw their inspiration from the relationship to the living of primitive peoples and works such as Alexandro Domasso's Les Furtifs, in which beings of flesh and sound are constantly metamorphosing. Thanks to the Prix L'Œuvre from the Fondation des Ateliers d'Art de France in 2017, he created Migration, a glass lace piece measuring over 4.5 meters. Inspired by an Amerindian canoe, this boat resembles the carcass of a stranded mammal, a reminder of the tragic situation of migrants in the Mediterranean. Antoine Brodin's practice also extends to drawing, in series such as Murmuration, whose thousands of dots are like elusive waves. His works are included in collections such as those of the Musée du verre de Carmaux and the Halle du Verre de Claret. 

The King of Birds
Blown glass, hot sculpted, sandblasted, 25x25x45 cm

Murmuration
Ink on paper, 110x70 cm