Alain Clément — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 22 → March 19, 2022

The gallery is pleased to hold an exhibition by Alain Clément.

The works chosen—with the accent laid on paintings on paper and reliefs in painted wood—were made from 2019 to 2021. Alain Clément’s latest painted or sculpted compositions—the two techniques are closely related in his work — are based on the superimposition of forms and colours.

Large arabesques painted with gouache stretch over the whole of the paper that has a watercolour ground in explosive tones.
With the transparency of the watercolour and the matt of gouache, the contrast in matter is added to the many-hued palette.
After giving structure to space by using a continuous line, Alain Clément has for a number of years used superimpositions and the interlacing of solid forms and curves, creating a new depth.

The gallery is also showing new painted wood reliefs made in 2021.
In sculpture, where Alain Clément works mainly using steel, he has turned to wood recently as it is lighter and easier to handle. He cuts it into varied curved and irregular shapes that form a vocabulary of signs. Once painted, the different components are assembled and can give rise to figurative coincidences.

A painter and sculptor, Alain Clément is also an engraver and his aquatints have been published regularly by the gallery since the 1990s. The new exhibition is therefore an occasion to show new colour engraving that completes the three fine works published in 2020 with the collaboration of Atelier René Tazé.

Alain Clément was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1941.
He lives and works in Nîmes, Paris and Berlin.
From 1970, he taught at Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montpellier, then leaving it for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes, becoming the Director in 1985.
For nearly 40 years the artist has developed abstract work sited between expression and a quest for composition. His paintings, sculptures and engravings combine optical pleasure, sensitivity and constructive strength.
After L’Arsenal-Musée de Soissons in 2016, the Musée d’art moderne de Céret devoted a solo exhibition to him in 2017.