Claude Tétot — Peintures récentes — Jean Fournier Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 5 → October 5, 2013

Galerie Jean Fournier is pleased to be presenting this exhibition of recent works by Claude Tétot, works as surprising in their change of format as in their combination of oils and fluorescent paint.

2012 marked a turning point in the Tétot oeuvre, with the vivid expanses of colour that had previously formed his grounds making way for the white of prepared canvas. White is now backdrop as well as form, setting up an ongoing movement and an unstable balance between the pictures’ elements. The many different planes are created by variations in tinted whites which underscore the depth of the canvas, while the ground/form linkage is reworked in a visually destabilising way.

Tétot is now addressing himself to smaller canvases — around 40 × 50 cm — which force him to rethink his relationship to space and composition. These small pictures are autonomous.

In some of the works the artist experiments with fluorescent acrylics, deliberately overemphasising an aspect of what paint is capable of. Like certain other recurring elements, such as grids and stripes, saturated fluorescent paint enables him to generate different visual states within a single composition.

Tétot’s work is basically about chromatic exploration. As the actual material of his paintings, these elating colours fuel compositional confrontation and equilibrium. The idea of confrontation is at the core of his approach: confrontation of colours, planes, forms and treatments. The clear, fragile uniformity of the coloured areas sometimes clashes radically with more nuanced, modulated zones. Other frequent occurrences are runs, transparency effects and uneven surfaces, executed with an unfailing mastery that adds to the overall equilibrium of the works.

As in his earlier series, the artist seeks to convey doubt: to assert and understand it.

“Claude Tétot is a painter simultaneously of affirmation and doubt, an artist whose pictures spark in the viewer, in a single response, the feeling of something at once self-evident and indeterminate.”

Pierre Wat, « Claude Tétot », 2009, p.9.

In this exhibition Tétot brings energy and sensitivity to works that are at once compelling and fragile.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a small artist’s book. Claude Tétot is a guest at the exhibition Moments artistiques, organised by Christian Aubert from 20–22 September 2013.