Kristian Desailly

Kristian Desailly, contemporary artist-painter, creates an abstract painting, lyrical and gestural, expressionist, but also with figurative motifs. His work, carried out largely in large formats, borrows from the pictorial world of Cobra (Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, Jacques Doucet, Alechinsky ...), Miró, Bram Van Velde, Chagall, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Joan Mitchell, Jean Reine, Kirkeby and Jean Miotte. Very young, Kristian Desailly lives surrounded by artists such as Tinguely, Vasarely, Deyrolle or Morellet. This trademark led him not to leave his pictorial universe afterwards and to seek creative exchanges with other artists, such as Jean Miotte, after obtaining the classic Beaux-Arts diploma in 1984 (with, in the wake of , two first prizes for drawing and painting). It is also with the writer Pierre Jourde that the dialogue engages in a linguistic and pictorial contest, in particular with the Voix Ink editions. Kristian Desailly's painting navigates between free and playful lyrical gestures and assertive and voluntary drawing. On the subject, we evoke similar practices, which build an imaginary world with recurring themes, borrowing from multiple and inventive bestiaries, from constructed and deconstructed landscapes, in the manner of Chagall or Kandinsky. Thus, Kristian Desailly does not like to claim only pure abstraction because his painting also summons figurative motifs such as fish, birds, characters from the universe of dreams, houses, urban landscapes, winter landscapes, moons. , suns and stars, even galaxies… There are hats, ties, streamers there, signs like whirlpools or coat racks… or animals bursting with splashes of color. Essentially, in recent decades, the technique used by the artist-painter (mainly on large formats, his privileged surface, occasionally on small and medium formats, where the work is then sometimes produced in series) combines acrylic with charcoal and pastel lines. It may also be watercolor that collects these materials. Or the drawing is pure, in pencil, pen or charcoal, intended for illustrations. The exhibitions follow one another in France, but also in Hamburg, Cologne, Bonn, Luxembourg, Zagreb, Dubrovnik and New York, to which are added the international art fairs of Frankfort, Düsseldorf and Madrid. In 2008 in Liévin, Kristian Desailly took part in the exhibition “Five abstracts” with Debré, Féraud, Miotte and Soulages. In 2009, he exhibited with Chu Teh Chun, Claisse, Guyomard, Le Parc, Miotte, Rancillac, Soto, Tani and Tyszblat. In 2010, Kristian Desailly was selected by the artistic committee of ST'ART to exhibit, with ART WAY, in an institutional space dedicated to the year France-Russia 2010. He paints regularly live, on the occasion of various events, accompanied by writer Pierre Jourde and pianist John Cuny. "It seems that my painting is part of what is called" lyrical abstract expressionism ", with all my reservations about the necessarily caricatural character of a label. I have a penchant for the primitive, hence a affinity with the CoBrA, the art of idiots and madmen, whose aspiration I claim to live his dream. " - Kristian Desailly "Kristian Desailly's work manifests at the same time a powerful originality, a creativity in permanent activity, and an intimate appropriation of certain artistic movements, whether it is surrealism, Cobra or lyrical abstraction, on an exact line between learned art and brut art. With that, he makes Desailly, that is to say he creates a universe. This universe is also ours, which appears to us in a particular state, exhuming shapes and forces that we would not have spontaneously noticed, revealing relationships that remained dormant.The visual pleasure provoked by these encounters of shapes and colors has something similar to that which the experience of flavor can provide: a unique, singular combination, in which at the same time a little of the complexity of the world comes together. " - Pierre Jourde, Writer