Claude Tétot — Œuvres 2013 — 2016 — Jean Fournier Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 20 → November 27, 2016

Galerie Jean Fournier welcomes Claude Tétot’s fourth solo exhibition: a group of recent canvases punctuated by works on paper. The combination of vivid colours and modular areas of flat colour has become Tétot’s signature. This remains characteristic of the works in this exhibition, but drawing has become more prominent in the form of outlines, marks and more gestural flat tint.

Since 2014 the landscape analogy has given way to compositions that are increasingly linear and graphic. There is a near-systematic use of fluorescent paint for marking out areas, defining surfaces and creating grids, and gesture has become looser and more supple.

This evolution — revolution? — is underpinned by Tétot’s long-cherished notion of imposing coexistence on unrelated elements that seem to defy association. Whether resorting to the generous areas of saturated, contrasting flat tint of the early 2000s or the fluorescent lines of the last few years, he is engaged in an endless quest for a kind of unity in disharmony — the “paradoxical harmony” spoken of by French poet Eric Suchère.

Tétot notes his plans for pictures in sketchbooks, roughing them out quickly but making them sufficiently explicit to form a usable repertoire of forms and compositions. Thus it is through addressing the question of drawing that his painting has mutated. The sketchbooks are still home to his projects for drawings, but other drawings have appeared too, and become a practice in its own right. Little by little drawing is “colonising” his painting, distilling a certain lightness along the way. Elegantly and with no trace of flippancy, Claude Tétot has divested himself of his commonplaces. He orchestrates the canvas with simple dots, his flat tints are less insistent and the picture space has been definitively opened up. Efficacy has metamorphosed into a less demonstrative kind of confidence. The artist has created his own territory: from one island to another and from one continent to another he is inventing his own geography and his own maps.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a booklet containing an essay by Emilie Ovaere-Corthay.

As part of the “Sunday at the Gallery” even organised by the Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art, Galerie Jean Fournier will be open on Sunday 27 November from noon to 6 pm.