Autoportrait, 2008

Jean Le Gac  

Drawing teacher, Le Gac is not tempted by a career where he would have to adhere to the tendencies which dominate the 1960’s, and his first activities (promenades, postal mailings) set him apart from the conventional categories, like the ones of Christian Boltanski whom he meets in 1966.

Passionate about literature, he puts together first in modest notebooks juxtaposing photos and equally suggestive texts, the story of the mundane doings of an anonymous painter. This narrative material enables him to categorise himself as an “artiste-peintre” projecting his problems, doubts and moods onto his double.

He is presented by Harald Szeemann at the “Documenta V” in the Individual Mythologies context, and is then incorporated into the Narrative Art next to Boltanski, Messager and Jochen Gerz. His work gradually goes back to a classical presentation of painting: photos and texts (themselves photographed) are presented in framed panels, without losing their bookish aspect (The Painter of Tamaris, 1989, Introduction to the works of an artist of my kind, 1987). Since 1981, he reproduces with traditional techniques (pastel, charcoal) illustrations borrowed from popular literature, which enable his character to live new adventures, all equally stereotyped, and completes his images by objects (sowing machines, cameras, cinema projector) evocative of a mise en scene or of a fiction.

Since 1970, Le Gac exhibits regularly at the Daniel Templon Gallery and the Granville Gallery in 2009 and 2011. Galerie Catherine Issart, St Paul de Vence from 1982 to 1994, and Galerie Brigitte March in Stuttgart.

Was exhibited at the Venice Biennale, French Pavillion, in 1972, International Pavillion in 1976 and 1980, and at the Documenta V, Kassel 1972 and Documenta VI, Kassel 1977.