Cristof Yvoré
13 May - 11 Jun 2011
CRISTOF YVORÉ
13 May – 11 June, 2011
ANTWERP – Zeno X Gallery is very pleased to announce a solo show with Cristof Yvoré (°Tours 1967, works and lives in Marseille). For his fifth solo show at the gallery, Yvoré will exhibit a new series of paintings.
Flowers and pots
Cristof Yvoré starts out from remembered images in which a recognisable commonplace is reduced to its most simple form of expression. A patch of light on the wall of a room, the folds at the bottom of a drawn curtain, a table with a vase on it, empty or filled with flowers of all shapes and colours. These tranquil still-lifes, which Yvoré has been painting consistently for years, and for which he refuses to provide any theoretical background, appear isolated from any form of contemporary influence. The things on which Yvoré bases his paintings are precisely such random, often discarded objects as a bouquet of flowers or a vase. The wear and tear these subjects have endured over the centuries gives these images a superficial feel that is precisely Yvoré’s starting point for his explorations as a painter.
‘I don’t do any preparatory work, I don’t look at pictures, I don’t copy any model. I simply recall an object I had previously observed. There are three sorts of object I regularly depict: facades, the corners of empty rooms and bouquets of flowers. There is no connection between these subjects: there was no strategy involved in choosing them, and once I had made this more or less random choice, the ‘unsuitability’ of the subject became a significant reason for painting them.’
Subject matter
The subject, whether it be a bouquet or part of a room, is no more than a reason to start painting and in the course of painting it fades into the background as a result of the focus on the pictorial handling of the painted surface.
The treatment of composition, colour and paint texture take centre stage, so that any form of representation of a reality beyond the image ultimately coincides with the quest for possibilities in painting. In this way, a patch of light that appears in a room as an illuminating rectangle, or a luxuriant bunch of swelling flowers in heavy colours degenerates into a purely pictorial element with a compositional value in which Yvoré, building one thick layer on another, creates his subtle range of colours and plays with paint texture.
Balancing on the borderline
The choice of ‘unsuitable’ subjects such as the bouquet shows that Yvoré is already playing about with painterly conventions in his initial idea for a work, and he continues to explore them as far as possible throughout the painting process.
‘The process of executing each painting is quite long; I rethink the figure and the background several times and load them with successive thick layers of paint. By applying paint so extravagantly I run the risk of every painting deteriorating into a thick crust. I play with the possibility of going as far as the boundary beyond which everything flips over into a complete mess. Having reached that line I can decide whether to start all over again or just to carry on.’
By building up lots of grainy layers and using paint he mixes himself, Yvoré often finds his paintings have the effect of being ‘overpainted’. The substance of the paint forms a pastose crust in which the manual mixing of oil and pigments also gives rise to sunken, watery areas and unexpected cracks and discolouration. An already more than saturated layer of paint is then made even heavier by the application of a resinous coating that appears to confine the empty rooms, pots and flowers in the thick substance of the paint forever. It is precisely in the working of the material that the boundary between an exaggerated, heavy painting and a stimulating new image is explored.
Cristof Yvoré has no complexes about incorporating painting conventions into his work, and by consistently reusing the same time-worn subjects and a stubbornly extreme, sometimes almost messy use of the paint, he employs them to create fascinating and sensitive images of beauty.
13 May – 11 June, 2011
ANTWERP – Zeno X Gallery is very pleased to announce a solo show with Cristof Yvoré (°Tours 1967, works and lives in Marseille). For his fifth solo show at the gallery, Yvoré will exhibit a new series of paintings.
Flowers and pots
Cristof Yvoré starts out from remembered images in which a recognisable commonplace is reduced to its most simple form of expression. A patch of light on the wall of a room, the folds at the bottom of a drawn curtain, a table with a vase on it, empty or filled with flowers of all shapes and colours. These tranquil still-lifes, which Yvoré has been painting consistently for years, and for which he refuses to provide any theoretical background, appear isolated from any form of contemporary influence. The things on which Yvoré bases his paintings are precisely such random, often discarded objects as a bouquet of flowers or a vase. The wear and tear these subjects have endured over the centuries gives these images a superficial feel that is precisely Yvoré’s starting point for his explorations as a painter.
‘I don’t do any preparatory work, I don’t look at pictures, I don’t copy any model. I simply recall an object I had previously observed. There are three sorts of object I regularly depict: facades, the corners of empty rooms and bouquets of flowers. There is no connection between these subjects: there was no strategy involved in choosing them, and once I had made this more or less random choice, the ‘unsuitability’ of the subject became a significant reason for painting them.’
Subject matter
The subject, whether it be a bouquet or part of a room, is no more than a reason to start painting and in the course of painting it fades into the background as a result of the focus on the pictorial handling of the painted surface.
The treatment of composition, colour and paint texture take centre stage, so that any form of representation of a reality beyond the image ultimately coincides with the quest for possibilities in painting. In this way, a patch of light that appears in a room as an illuminating rectangle, or a luxuriant bunch of swelling flowers in heavy colours degenerates into a purely pictorial element with a compositional value in which Yvoré, building one thick layer on another, creates his subtle range of colours and plays with paint texture.
Balancing on the borderline
The choice of ‘unsuitable’ subjects such as the bouquet shows that Yvoré is already playing about with painterly conventions in his initial idea for a work, and he continues to explore them as far as possible throughout the painting process.
‘The process of executing each painting is quite long; I rethink the figure and the background several times and load them with successive thick layers of paint. By applying paint so extravagantly I run the risk of every painting deteriorating into a thick crust. I play with the possibility of going as far as the boundary beyond which everything flips over into a complete mess. Having reached that line I can decide whether to start all over again or just to carry on.’
By building up lots of grainy layers and using paint he mixes himself, Yvoré often finds his paintings have the effect of being ‘overpainted’. The substance of the paint forms a pastose crust in which the manual mixing of oil and pigments also gives rise to sunken, watery areas and unexpected cracks and discolouration. An already more than saturated layer of paint is then made even heavier by the application of a resinous coating that appears to confine the empty rooms, pots and flowers in the thick substance of the paint forever. It is precisely in the working of the material that the boundary between an exaggerated, heavy painting and a stimulating new image is explored.
Cristof Yvoré has no complexes about incorporating painting conventions into his work, and by consistently reusing the same time-worn subjects and a stubbornly extreme, sometimes almost messy use of the paint, he employs them to create fascinating and sensitive images of beauty.