Cheval, 2022

Laurent Messager  

See, observe reality as if we were discovering it at the moment. Starting from drawing, taking parts of visual reality, recomposing them to construct an expressive object, a sculpture or a painting which would have its own logic, its own balance. My work is always composed first on a sketch, whether in two dimensions or in volume, the drawing is my basis for reflection. I naturally focus a lot of my attention on colors. Flashy or discreet, smooth or rough, light or dark, they respond to each other and form the harmony of a work. Even my sculptures are most of the time polychrome as an echo of my painting works. Portraits, subjects often discussed, beyond the resemblance it is the deep and felt expression of a personality or a being that I have met or seen. The writings, recurring in my work as a painter, are generally inverted, like the da Vinci codices. These are indeed words or sentences, the meaning of which is linked to the spirit of the painting and its theme. It's like a form of written redundancy of the subject of the painting, it's background noise, it's the thought that never stops. My technique. In a word: 'mixed'. Acrylic first then reworked in oil by superposition, this process allows transparency and opacity of material effects or glaze appearance. I also have a particular affection for energetically brushed gestural effects to give movement to my composition and express this energy which is in all things. And in sculpture? Mixed too. It is a clever assembly of special cements, concrete and cut stone aggregated and sealed on a metal frame. The history of art. No painter can claim to do without it. No one emerges from nothing like pure genius. So yes, I am influenced by a lot of ancient and contemporary artists and I dig into their works with real pleasure. in bulk Bruegel, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Vinci, Dali, Francis Bacon, Picasso, Erro, Giacometti and many others. And I don't limit myself to large-scale painting, you can also see in my work the influence of comics or Graph.