Olivier Michel

Olivier Michel lives and works in Amiens. A graphic designer by training, he naturally began his artistic work through drawing in the 90s. Each piece takes as its origin simple gestures and decisions, which a certain irony could even be interpreted as derisory. This commitment to simplicity allows the establishment of rules that establish and frame its work. Olivier Michel participated in the European Nurseries program for young artists with a residency at the Méduse complex in Quebec (2006). He regularly took part in numerous group exhibitions in France, the BIC Collection exhibition at 104 in Paris in 2018, as well as abroad. His work has been the subject of individual exhibitions, notably at the Galerie du Haut Pavé in Paris (2002), or more recently with the Frac Picardie (2013). In 2016, he was invited by the artothèque d'Hennebont to invest his exhibition gallery. He has also produced several works in public spaces, including the most recent: the artistic 1% of the Beauvais police station. Represented by the Réjane Louin Gallery, he participates on several occasions in the Drawing Now drawing fair and his works are present in various private and institutional collections: BIC company, Frac Picardie, artothèques in Caen, Amiens, Hennebont. Olivier Michel's enterprise does not seek speed or prowess, it reflects the importance of duration, of this incompressible time induced by the realization of the work, replayed and sometimes declined thanks to video recording. The artist's gesture is fixed in its accomplishment, in its sequences and amplitudes. Following the traces and marks on the paper, the hold of time and its flow are made palpable, by the effects of invasion, overlap, superposition of patterns deployed on the same surface. Using matrices, using several printing techniques, screen printing or monotype, Olivier Michel distils offsets and variations to explore all the possibilities of a motif involved in the variable amplitude of the series. Far from any chromatic research, any desire for composition and construction, these lines intermingle and end up creating areas of density and transparency, illusions of thickness and sinking into the surface. Observed independently of their production process, Olivier Michel's creations are part of a tradition that reconnects with certain codes of abstract expression. The line takes on the value of a pure sign, eradicating any desire for narration on the part of the artist, any attempt at interpretation on the part of the spectator. The motif disappears, highlighting the gesture of the creator and the process of covering an initially empty, bare surface.