François Morellet — dans ses petits papiers — Aline Vidal Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 19 → April 30, 2011

François Morellet’s work has acquired an undisputed reputation; but his drawings remain relatively unknown. For this new exhibition, the gallery is revealing this aspect of his work with a selection of the artist’s drawings, dating from the fifties until today.

Drawings, in François Morellet’s work, play a large role; they are in the heart of the creative process. They are essential for the construction and the conception of an idea, but also each piece of paper becomes, with the help of artistic gesture, the place where a thought forms and deforms itself. These are not just preparatory drawings but rather art works in their own right.

In the series of drawings using tracing paper the support is folded thus diverting what seems to be the logical direction of a curve or a line. As a result, a three-dimensional ever transforming shape, in constant movement, springs from the drawing itself. Continuing this idea, the Etude, trames superposées, 1959 artist also often uses squared paper as an architect.

The practice of drawing is questioning the support where a complex geometric system appears through the use of a grid. This can be seen, for example, in Etude, trames superposées (Study, layered grids) dating from 1959. A grid can also be constructed through the use of hyphens, like in Tirets 1cm dont l’espacement augmente à chaque rangée de 1 cm ( 1 cm Hyphens between which the space increases by 1cm for each row) (1975).

François Morellet also experiments with different techniques in his drawings; the collage entitled Cercle fragmenté (Fragmented circle), produced in 1977, is a prime example of the varying technique in François Morellet’s work. The artist’s ’language’ stems from pure and simple forms, but is also formed through the use of fragmentation, demonstrated as in the series entitled “Défigurations”.

Among his latest drawings, a selection of his preparatory studies for the Louvre‘s Lefuel staircase will be exhibited.

The Centre Georges Pompidou holds its first large scale exhibition of François Morellet from March the 2nd to July the 4th of 2011.