VOISINAGES

For this new exhibition, LE TRIGRAM presents the work of painter Christophe Pradal. He describes his graphic work as figurative. This may come as a surprise, given that he was a painter of hyper-figuration when he left the Académie de Port-Royal.

He certainly identified a revolution in his production in 2004, which led him towards the graphic arts, but he does not see this as a shift towards abstraction. He doesn't see himself as an abstract artist ("finished abstraction is an idea, no longer art"), or conceptual ("it's like dance, when you start thinking, it's over"), or contemporary (he prefers to call himself modern).
Rather than gloss over his works, he prefers to evoke vivid memories of their creation. But he creates in discomfort. Shunning paraphrase and conditioned reflexes, he regularly wipes the slate clean to reinvent his writing. New media, new tools.
If there's something he develops over time, it's not so much a precise technique ("they learn quickly") as a spiritual gymnastic: letting go.
Paul Calori