MARC DESGRANDCHAMPS

Acclaimed French artist Marc Desgrandchamps is currently presenting a brand-new set of works on paper at Galerie Lelong & Co. in Paris. On show are postcards reproducing paintings from a variety of periods, covered by the artist with cut-outs of images of his own works.

Desgrandchamps’ paintings are inspired by images of all sorts taken from his personal archives: press photographs, film scenes, reproductions of paintings. His memory and these stimuli act as the starting point for a mysterious narration that blurs the visual landmarks of the viewer.

By fragmenting some of his own works to layer them over images from other painters, the artist embarks on a pictorial and conceptual journey that produces remarkably intense images on a very small surface area. The reproductions chosen are generally little-known works by eminent artists such as Joos van Cleve, Delacroix, Ingres, Le Corbusier, Joan Miró, Douglas Gordon and others, that disappear almost entirely behind the collage.

The exhibition also includes gouaches on paper which repeat the compositions of certain collages on a larger scale. Here, the artist is inviting us to acquire a deeper understanding of his artistic process. A number of recently-completed oils on canvas complete this brand-new ensemble.

Marc Desgrandchamps (born in 1960) lives and works in Lyon (France). Marc Desgrandchamps, leading painter figure painter of the French art scene, plays with the notions of opacity, transparency and superimposition. If his painting is figurative, indeed we recognize bodies and landscapes, the perspective is often twisted, space is indefinite, and suddenly anomalies arise: bodies and objects are fragmented.

His works references comes from many universes (art history, photography, cinema, literature and music), it raises the question of the medium’ specificities and experiences the limits of figuration. He paints, according to his own words, ” a painting of doubt, doubt of the figure, doubt of presence, doubt even of painting”. Another recurrent motif in its artistic practice, the feminine figure, and especially the one of the bathers, occupies a central place.

Marc Desgrandchamps has benefited from several major exhibitions, especially in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Strasbourg (2004), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon (2004), the Kunstmuseum in Bonn (2005), the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Georges Pompidou (2006), as well as an important retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris (2011). In addition, his work is present in French institutional collections (FRAC Ile-de-France – Le Plateau in Paris, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Saint-Étienne, Regional Museum of Contemporary Art Languedoc-Roussillon in Sérignan, Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg).

“Le tourment de la ligne d’horizon”
March 17 – May 7, 2002
Marc Desgrandchamps
Galerie Lelong & Co.
Paris, France
Galerie Lelong website