Vue de l'exposition "Supports Surfaces"Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
In 1969, a group of young artists decided that it was time for paintings to move out of the frame. Canvases without stretcher bars, stretcher bars without canvases, endlessly repeated abstract motifs, unfolded or rolled up surfaces … a wind of change blew over artistic creation, challenging conventional painting.
Vue de l'exposition "Supports Surfaces"Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
The 2017 exhibition at Carré d'Art
The exhibition featured at Carré d'Art (curated by Romain Mathieu) in 2017 and entitled Supports/Surfaces : Les origines 1966-1970 highlighted the origins and history of the group's approach during the 1960s until it was disbanded in 1972.
Claude VIALLAT, "CF 2.6.13", 1966Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Claude Viallat, CF 2.6.13, 1966
Claude Viallat explores painting through its material components. In 1966, he adopted a process that he would continue to use: a single pattern often with bright colors. This characteristic pattern forms both the substance and form of his work.
Claude VIALLAT, "Taud de bateau", 1986Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Claude Viallat, Taud de bateau (Boat Cover), 1986
"The painter no longer has to prove his knowledge. He isn't an illusionist, nor is he a fantasy showman or an image maker. He has to speak another language within a specific language, to determine its immediately perceptible vocabulary." Claude Viallat
Claude VIALLAT , "Sans titre", 1989Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Claude Viallat, Untitled, 1989
By subverting or deconstructing the pictorial support, Viallat chooses to bare the canvas to the point of showing only its materiality. He removes the stretcher bars, desacralizes the canvas and deprives its surface of any role of subjective representation.
Claude VIALLAT, "Sans titre", 1997Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Claude Viallat, Untitled, 1997
By subverting or deconstructing the pictorial support, Viallat chooses to bare the canvas to the point of showing only its materiality. He removes the stretcher bars, desacralizes the canvas and deprives its surface of any role of subjective representation.
Noël Dolla, Toile Croix, 1973
Noël Dolla explores the pictorial practice to its most subtle limits. With his series of paintings on canvas entitled Croix, he endlessly multiplies dots of color. They form a grid that impregnates and darkens the surface until it becomes monochrome.
Noël Dolla, Tarlatane, 1969
For Dolla, the deconstruction of the painting goes hand in hand with the withdrawal of the artist in favor of the mechanisms of the painting's material realization. The tarlatan, an open-weave fabric, is covered here with colored dots. In other works, an array of repeated motifs (plane, star, cloud …) are used.
Daniel DEZEUZE, "Extensible passé au bitume et à l'acide", 1968Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Daniel Dezeuze, Extensible passé au bitume et à l'acide
Daniel Dezeuze's works are made of fragile, yet flexible, almost raw materials. They structure, shape, and set a rhythm to the space, just like this work, which has no autonomous existence. Instead, it seems to thrive on the space it occupies.
Daniel DEZEUZE, "Triangulation rehaussée de brun", 1975Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Daniel Dezeuze, Triangulation rehaussée de brun, 1975
Since 1967, Daniel Dezeuze has challenged painting and sculpture in a radical way. It seeks to trap the eye by taking the visitor by surprise. At the same time, he conducted an important theoretical activity as part of the journal entitled Peinture, Cahiers théoriques.
André-Pierre Arnal, Untitled, 1970
Using loose canvases, André-Pierre Arnal defines his practice as "a progressive, non-systematic attempt to analyze the ways in which color is applied to a medium." He experiments with imprinting, crumpling, folding, dyeing, rubbing, stenciling …
Jean-Pierre PINCEMIN, "Composition", 1970Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Composition, 1970
Jean-Pierre Pincemin deconstructs the concept of painting with a large-format fabric. Not only is it not mounted on stretchers, it is also not painted, but decorated with industrially printed patterns.
Patrick SAYTOUR, "Sans titre", 1968 / 1992Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Patrick Saytour, Untitled, 1968/1992
In this work, Patrick Saytour applies the principle of mending by modifying, and correcting earlier works. Here, foldings from 1968, respectful of Supports/Surfaces codes, alternate with their 1992 reinterpretation.
Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain - Nîmes - www.carreartmusee.com
Navigart: https://www.navigart.fr/carredart/artworks
Centre de documentation Bob Calle: https://carreartmusee.centredoc.fr/index.php
Realization: Carré d'art - Musée
Iconography: © ADAGP ; © Patrick Saytour
