Last10, 2018

Sébastien Preschoux  

Deeply influenced by optical art as well as by the values of the teaching of Bauhaus, which advocates an instruction focused on the fundamental values of manual work, Sébastien Preschoux unceasingly creates drawings increasingly complex, able to compete with what a machine could produce in a short time.

Through this approach he creates a visual confusion in the viewer and raises questions about the origin (man made or machine made) of his work. But its not until taking a close look that the viewer can identify the stamps of the passage of the human hand, an attitude the artist calls the reward of the curious.

Painting on wood or on drawings, the artist began a long process of patience and meticulousness, where no error can interfere, or he risks having to come back to his starting point. Concentration as much as mental and physical stress, where the tool, in this case the hand, can not fail.

For his paintings, the wood support he creates himself, is carefully prepared. The successive sanding of the wooden support combined with the application of several layers of Chinese ink over which he applies an acrylic outline.

Of a deep and absolute black, the background reveals the pattern of the painting and the subtility and brilliance of the colors. Starting from a basic template, the artist engages in the outline of the shape, an endless convolution, anticipating the subtle transition from one color to another by the gradual addition of a small percentage of the next color. The complex interlacing of the plot and the gradual shift from one color to another play with our optical limits, while we let ourselves get hypnotized by the vibration of the form and color.