Sans titre, 2026

Remi Delaplace   Emerging artists

"Untitled" is a small original acrylic on wood painting, signed Rémi Delaplace and available for purchase. By taking the motif of the checkered floors present in Vermeer's paintings, the artist explores the relationships between the construction of space, pictorial material, and the movement of the gaze. This research is in continuation of Didi-Huberman's remarks on Vermeer that you mention: the checkerboard becomes here a means to question depth and to open, in the painted surface, the possibility of another space.
The creation process relies on a play of covering and unveiling. On a previously painted background, the artist places a stencil, then applies a new layer of paint. Once the stencil is removed, certain parts of the background reappear and participate in the construction of the checkerboard. The figure therefore does not result solely from an addition: it is also born from the revelation of a material already present. The background acts as a figure, transforming a prior state of the painting into an active element of the composition.
In the work, the dark squares alternate with colored fragments where green, orange, white, and purple are particularly mixed. Their textures contrast with the geometric structure of the checkerboard, which suggests a floor leading towards a mauve vertical plane. To the left, a large dark area frames this space while leaving its demarcation uncertain. The whole evokes an interior without completely fixing its contours: the architecture is drawn, but remains crossed by the freedom of the material. Remi-Delaplace-Sans-titre-acrylique-19.6x262-cm-2026.jpg
Yellow spots, bordered by green, are distributed on the mauve plane as on the checkerboard. Their differences in size and dispersion contribute to a sensation of depth, while disturbing the reading of a regular perspective. They can evoke suspended elements, projections, or simple painting events. The gaze thus moves from the lines of the floor to the colored spots, from the suggested space to the material surface of the painting.
At the crossroads of architectural geometry and pictorial texture, "Untitled" does not therefore only seek to represent a space: the work puts its appearance into play. The checkerboard orders the depth, while the colors and traces move its limits. Through the gesture of masking and then unveiling, Rémi Delaplace makes painting a place of opening, where what was hidden becomes visible and where the gaze, in turn, constructs its own passages.