Rodrigue Glombard’s new solo exhibition, “Le temps passe et. . .  [Time Passes and . . .], opens tonight, October 30 at 7:00pm at l’Habitation Clément in Martinique. It will be on view until December 6, 2009.

Melinda Boulai (France-Antilles) explains that there is nothing banal about Glombard’s exhibition title finding that each one of his pieces— paintings, sculptures, and installations— articulates a discourse on temporality and none of them allows the observer to remain indifferent. When Boulai asks about his “obsession with time,” the artist responds that he is not sure. “At the beginning, I wanted to work around the concept of memory. [. . .] I realize that the motivating element in my work is time.” A way in which the artist addresses the viewer is asking “Time passes and . . . what does one do about it?” Glombard makes clear that he want people “to appropriate the beginning of the phrase and add the rest.”

Boulai is struck by the notion of fragility illustrated by Glombard’s installations located in the distillery areas of the Habitation Clément. The artist points out that, when he saw the nine vats (fermentation tanks) he felt interpellated by them. The result was a series of installations using bagasse (the dry, fibrous residue left over from the crushed stalks of sugar cane after extraction), pieces of cane stalks, and minerals to reflect the ephemerality of time. Glombard asks us to “be sensitive to the feeling of fragility that they emit [. . .], the fragility of man confronting the environment, the fragility of the environment facing our actions.”

Since 1997, Glombard has kept a notebook where he adds a painting daily. He has edited over 300 works to produce an art book. His book, Une peinture chaque jour [One Painting Each Day] will be available at the exhibition.

See paintings from Glombard’s daily notebook at

For full review (in French), see http://www.martinique.franceantilles.fr/actualite/culture/l-obsession-du-temps-30-10-2009-49553.php

For more on the Clément Foundation, l’Habitation Clément,  and the Clément Distilleries, see previous post IS 110 L’ Habitation Clément and Martinique’s Rhum Agricole and http://www.fondation-clement.org/fr/accueil.html