Hommage Keith, 2023

Jean-Michel Gnidzaz  

When thinking of Jean Michel Gnidzaz, we certainly recognize the kinetic two and three dimensional composition that characterize his work from the 90’s. He uses a spectrum of compositional arrangements with his play of collage, the technique of folding simple sheets of paper, his rigorous geometric style. Colorful contrasts, the artiste revived the tradition of kinetic in a subtle way.

Jean Michel Gnidzaz was inspired thus by the conceptual work of Soto rather than of their tendency to ‘gigantism’, and refused the aseptic precision of other painters of the kinetic movement towards a personal touch giving again a real place to the gesture and a certain style in his painting. Following his research, Jean Michel Gnidzaz was able to produce a strong work that stands from his own.

After a decade of reflexion devoted to geometrical composition, Jean Michel Gnidzaz has broken today with pure abstraction and gave to his work another orientation. Since 2003, he creates a new serie of portraits devoted to cultural icons of the 20e century. Struck by the persistence in the unconscious collective of certain images or photographs of major cultural personalities of the 20th century, in particular those lively to express rebellion to the established order, Jean Michel Gnidzaz questions here their iconic status.

By neutralizing the background of the original photograph and redoing the portrait from the beginning playing with two or tree colors, dimensions and altering color stripes, which bring about a sense of movement. He tales away from these modern icons the identification that is always immediate.

Thus taken away for one instant, from the usual respect held for them, these popular idols find again a capacity to provoke the spectator.

The process forces one to take a quick step back to evaluate our judgments: what is the importance of the Beatles, James Dean, Coluche in our society today. What place would they be in the spirit of the future generation; would they escape from becoming decorations that commercial exploitation has made them?

No one has the answer yet but the work of Jean Michel Gnidzaz raises the question discerningly. This new series of portraits and the flood of questions that it brings present a new level and substantial rise in his artistic evolution and make us curious about his future work.