Hoel Gwern

Hoel Gwern is a French artist born in 1969 who lives and works in Brittany. A training at the Beaux-Arts in Nantes and then a multidisciplinary practice of the arts have made it possible to develop a plastic approach nourished by very diverse inspirations, from the primitive arts to contemporary works.

Practicing mainly painting, drawing and engraving, his artistic universe explores the relationship of the figure to the landscape, whether informal, or a spontaneous expression of color and matter, on the wire between abstraction and representation.

Silhouettes cross landscapes, are themselves moving landscapes evoking walking, running or dancing. A mise-en-abîme of the figure as a receptacle and mirror of the environment traveled through evokes other territories where forms occur. The movement traces a wake, an imprint left in the flesh of space, the ground or the air. The body is the place of passage, carrying mineral, sand or wind adventures, here everything is invisible displacement, silent surveyor of an imaginary world.

The material is abstracted in its representation, the body in the expression of its contours, it is a page where the color, the curves or the angles of rocks are described. The flat areas are lakes, salars*, the roughness of the mountains or simple signs dancing in the painting… the shadow of a moment cut by the light and extracted from the surface towards a motionless journey.

With a predilection for painting and oil mediums, he also uses acrylics, markers, impastos, with a contrasting use of textures and color chords.

The drawings are made by mixing techniques, charcoal, black chalk, lead pencil, watercolor pencils. Drawings in oil, ink and watercolor on prepared papers as well as woodcuts allow further explorations of the themes in which the work is inscribed.

Exhibiting regularly in Brittany, he is open to artistic collaborations, individual and collective exhibitions. Its website allows a global visualization of the work and its different approaches.

*Salar: salt desert