Olivier Petiteau

Olivier Petiteau « grew up » in the repetitive sound of the machine tools of a factory. The factory closed. He then discovered emptiness and absence. Since then, he has been trying to  » express  » reality, with works that are in relation with their time. Cultivating doubt and dissatisfaction, only experimentation keeps him going. Like François Morellet – his neighbour in Cholet – he deploys almost mechanical systems. Like Carlos Cruz-Diez, he follows a repetitive approach to formalism. Like Bertrand Lavier, he stages the world and a form of language…
In his works, lines, then lines, and then more lines. Juxtaposed, side by side, repeated, all the same, and all different, like a signage in which contrasts bring light, rhythm, movement, depth of space, illusion. The optical consequences, the vibration are to be considered as a musical setting of reality, with « ordinary » materials, of industrial manufacture, and colours from bombs, artificial and defined, as simple information placed side by side. Everything is an illusion, » explains Olivier Petiteau. And my painting is a kind of mise en scène of this mirage, a kind of pictorial irony exaggerating the false to invite the true ».