Bertrand Art’No

Arnaud BERTRAND says “Art'No. »Has been passionate about art since a young age and it is only natural that his passion guides him today towards an artistic adventure that has finally been anchored in him for a long time.

Self-taught, with a sure gesture, ample and channeled Art'No. creates reassuring portraits, calm and poised, mischievous or dreamy, which offer us in their own way their sparkling gaze on the world.

Art'No. organizes on its white sheet, its canvas or its support, stratum by stratum, plots and lines of successive colors to achieve their explosion: primary colors (or at least very close), bright, flamboyant, strong but sensual colors.

All this delicately transcribed, traced, drawn, sublimated, in order to achieve balance and harmony in a notion of duality dear to the artist.

The colors are in his image, filled with generosity and optimism ...

At the crossroads of narrative figuration, graphics and comics, his work is born from spontaneity, fantasy, but above all from the energy he has in him ...

Energy which translates into a sure , spontaneous but strongly controlled gesture.

He knows he has no room for error ... a line that escapes, an inadequate movement of the hand, and it is the entire balance of his composition that falters ...

In his series of colorful portraits, firmly anchored in the spirit of the times, his imagination is overflowing and joyful.

The expressions on his faces refer us to current topics and concerns always revolving around our daily environment and the Other: friends, relationships, meetings ...

His very endearing faces all seem so serious, so vulnerable or so happy. They are constructed and symbolized by one or two colored volutes, like threads so fragile that they would be liable at any time to discredit their beautiful expression.

His characters could all be "our friends", friends for a day, friends for an evening, friends of a lifetime ...

Their very presence on the web touches us and fills us with happiness.

There is no longer any need to ask questions:

We adhere, we love, we suffer ...

Because it is true that from his childhood Art'No. was touched by the works of Mondrian but especially of Matisse and Miro by their spontaneous and primitive gestures.

Pencil and colors in hand, during all his family outings, he tried to sketch the moments of everyday life, which he recorded in his little sketchbooks.

Today he has known how to create a personal writing, both naive and simplistic but certainly sure and controlled, so graphic but all imprint of poetry .

Art'No. does not seek to be compared to ... even if he claims certain attractions or influences.

His hand expresses itself spontaneously on his canvas or on his sheet of paper.

The errors of the beginning, the hazardous gestures, the imperfections, the evolving graphics have strongly contributed to the current construction of his drawings on paper, his paintings on canvas, his wall compositions all in a space carrying his favorite colors ...

Art'No. plays with volutes, curves and arabesques, improbable freehand forms resulting from graphics which he wants each time innovative and which cling and sway between mystery and poetry.

He favors the movement which is inscribed even in a free and dynamic line, like a link which connects us to singular or sophisticated proposals.

We thus discover the emotional charge of his works, the tension of colors and gesture, the relationship between body and space.
“Figurative abstraction" then seems to be the freest mode of expression, one that is determined without constraints, the only limit being the physical framework of the support.

The signs, the lines, the areas of color and even the articulation of the pictorial planes have the simplicity of the obvious.

His designs are stylized and refined. The gesture is sure and controlled.

We are in the speed of execution. The primary colors that occupy the space lead us to a perception of volume and 3D.

The goal of Art'No. is not to represent the totality of the object (face), but to distinguish each element which composes it in volume and in plan.

The contrasts of form are induced by the color ...