Prints in Rhythm
(synopsis)
According to the theoretical approach developed in my doctoral thesis Entendre le pictural (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), my artistic research accentuates and pursues the rhythmic qualities of printmaking. The aim is to suggest movement and inconsistency by irregular patterns and shapes, achieved through several etching techniques and revisited during the printing process.
The idea of intonation, borrowed from a musical context, assumes a visual dimension thanks to all the choices inherent in the printing : mixing the inks, looking for the right timbres and tonalities, as well as testing the extreme tactility of the wiping process. This creates a physical connection with the material itself, as a rhythm produces vibration sensed by the whole body.
Printing is considered as the precise moment in which the form finds its way through the material. Through visual intonation, the matrix can only come to fruition in a provisional way, in accordance with the very nature of this process. Variation is introduced by means of sequences and multiple overprinting, coupled with a chromatic inflection of timbre and tone.
At the time of their production, I think of the prints as so many units converging into a suite, presented in variable and modular sequences according to the exhibition space. Once hung in a sequence, each piece stands as a fragment and responds to each other by alternating configurations. The insistence and repetition of visual elements produce a rhythmic tension, between impermanence and renewal.
Intended to challenge the peculiar fragility of fine art prints, my research has a special regard on the way a variable edition of prints is hung and then experienced in the exhibition space as the paradigm of a wandering that impregnates space and time.
The rhythm of forms is felt as an entity in perpetual autogenesis, just as music and sound surround and invade us.
