Posturale attitude puts forward the state of mind in which I apprehend the painting and the various behaviors which result from it. It is as much about showing the objective elements that condition my work, as the subjective dimension linked to the work of the body confronted with the material. I elaborate multi-referential pieces which play and are played as much of the seduction as of the strangeness.
Emmanuelle Villard, March 2007
Abstraction
I position myself in the field of abstraction by interest for its history of forms and contents, but also by pragmatism. This allows me to never have recourse to the composition as a space of projection, or to any narrative thread other than those of the paradigms it invokes. But paradoxically, it also allows me to make multiple allusions, sometimes fortuitous and always linked to the manipulation of the material.
Painting
The methodical exploration of the material constitutes the starting point of my work, in particular the fact that it can be moving. It can flow, slide, slip, fall, produce accidents and surprises. To go out of the frame in the literal sense as in the figurative sense. It is for me a metaphor of the real world. I articulate my practice around the desire to set limits, frames, to contain the slippage to a certain extent while letting the material do its work.
However pragmatic the attitude I adopt in the studio, I still have to make choices (qualities of paints, tools, colors...) and this is subjective... the subject, the I and the game are not far away.
Remains
I work on this notion both literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, by considering the fluid character of the material, the fact that it can escape from the frame of the painting and make various accidents, like so many remains of an artistic intention, kinds of "residues" of painting, which I integrate into the work. Figuratively speaking, I wonder what can remain of abstract painting today.
Appropriationism
I began my studies in the late 1980s, a period of renewed interest in historical forms and their appropriation. I keep a certain taste for borrowing, but neither in a critical or essentialist perspective, nor with the aim of updating forms or contents of the past. The borrowings that I can make (and which are not essentially dependent on the field of art) are more related to the desire to produce detour, contradictions, oddities and dysfunctions: to play with irony, and/or with nostalgia, of the various paradigmatic fields.
Seduction
If seduction is claimed in my pieces, it is by no means the affirmation of a stereotyped and instrumentalized femininity. I use these codes, just like those of the erotic, by play and irony, in the will to maintain the pieces in a constant ambiguity. It is also a tool: a way to catch the eye.
Postural attitude puts forward the state of mind in which I apprehend the painting and the various behaviors which result from it. It is as much about showing the objective elements that condition my work, as the subjective dimension linked to the work of the body confronted with the material. I elaborate multi-referential pieces which play and play as much of the seduction as of the strangeness. They generate various allusions as well to the history of art as to other fields (decorative arts, design...) and are "loaded" with the history of their elaboration process. They propose a game of back and forth between the field of abstract painting and that of the object (object painting, visual object, "surface" object...) while paying particular attention to the surface (trompe-l'oeil, "trompe-sens"). The confrontation of the various series aims at the disorder: a complex world, petrified of seduction and multiple afferences, a little destabilizing and decadent, a little too brilliant on the surface, perhaps in the image of the one in which we evolve.
Emmanuelle Villard, March 2007