A construction involves a precise and systematic modus operandi, a rigorous and codified know-how that, put into practice by the hand of a master builder, will reveal all its beauty and complexity.
The group show "Constructions" highlights five visual builders (Pascal Vilcollet, Pieter Ceizer, Roberto Rivadeneira, Matt Neuman and Rémy Benito), international artists each offering very varied pictorial structures but which come together in seriality, the search for contrasts, a balance between compositions and colors and a dynamism in (a)symmetries.
The Parisian-Dutch Pieter Ceizer is a master in the art of construction games around typography. By merging words and shapes, he deconstructs letters, blurs the lines between the signifier and the signified. The result is wall sculptures in wood or metal, painted with millimetric precision, carrying a positive, playful and exhilarating message. Pieter Ceizer was recently chosen by Pharrell Williams to appear in his exhibition “Just Phriends” alongside Kaws, Murakami and Invader.
For over 10 years, American Matt Neuman has been exploring abstract geometric constructions, with the duality between color and form, but also repetition and infinity as his guiding principles. Driven by a strong connection to tradition, he engraves geometric plates on wood that he inks and then stamps on his canvases, thus creating associations of complex symmetries and colors.
According to the Frenchman Pascal Vilcollet: “In painting, there is the construction phase, which is to learn and assimilate things; and there is this deconstruction phase, where we strip ourselves of everything and become more sincere. » The artist applies this mantra to floral still life in the exhibition. He deconstructs this classic motif, returning to the essence of the gesture, on bright and stripped-down backgrounds, to give birth to poetic and evanescent works.
It was obvious to the Frenchman Rémy Benito, an architect by training, to base his practice on what constitutes the heart of an architectural construction: the frame. Methodical, his serial work is structured around the line. With the tip of his colored pencils, the artist traces tens of thousands of lines on paper: more or less dense, supported, elongated, curved, to form, in shades of blue, plays of shadow and light that materialize surprising geometric figures, as if from another world.
Roberto Rivadeneira’s work lies at the intersection of technology and abstraction, challenging traditional notions of space and perception. The Berlin-based Ecuadorian artist favors superpositions of techniques and materials: on aluminum canvases with astonishing shapes, he prints ultra-macroscopic photographs that he paints in order to blur their rendering even more. The result is retro-futuristic totemic constructions with iridescent reflections.
Read more
