|
ADDICT GALERIE 14/16 rue de Thorigny 75003 Paris FRANCE  T:+33(0)1 48 87 05 04 F:+33(0)1 48 87 05 08 e-mail: EXHIBITION 17 OCTOBER . 28 NOVEMBER 2015 |
 |
 |
Over the past few exhibitions, ADDICT Galerie showcases a singular vision upon Photography. That is why it questions today the ambiguous links uniting photography and painting throughout the unconventional yet remarkable journey of an exceptional painter.
Jean Faucheur is a Parisian underground icon. Launched into the centre stage, he took part in all Indie movements in the early 80’s. With an attractive yet mysterious personality, he is adulated but remains marginalised. Respected by his peers, he is often wrongly underestimated by the market place. This prolific leader was the instigator of the famous Ripoulin Brothers. This group of jolly fellows stuck their paintings onto street advertising billboards. Their dazzling success led them to New York in 1984 to the Tony Shafrazi Gallery which happened to be the regular meeting point for some Warhol, Basquiat & Keith Haring. The group of Frenchies was managed like a rock band, their names were Faucheur, Claude Closky and PiroKao alias Pierre Huyghe. In 2013, the Centre Pompidou organised a retrospective exhibition on Pierre Huyghe, who was only 50 yo at the time.
Jean Faucheur, the exceptionally gifted young man, graduated first in his year, leaving The Art Decos School valedictorian. In 1990, he presented a Solo Show at the FIAC (International Contemporary Art Fair) at the Agnes B. gallery. The exhibition was a huge success, all artworks sold out in a couple of days and before the end of the fair! All had found a buyer! But Faucheur as the free spirited man that he was and still is, chose to lead a path of uncertain grounds rather than follow a ready-made career plan.
Twenty years after leaving behind his first painting on the streets, like a bottle at sea, Faucheur is made guru by the 2000’s post-graffiti generation; a title he accepts as he became the « mirror of someone else ». He doesn’t hesitate to stir up that entire little world in order to follow his work against all odds.
Faucheur is as attracted to light as he is to darkness. Either way, he hides as much as he reveals, and that goes for his painting as well. He has always made the object of his offence disappeared. The Ripoulin abandoned their artwork in the streets but never gave up on their ambition. They believed in the theory of the perfect crime, where there is no body, there is no crime.
« Photography has always been the starting point of his work » as he likes to say. But as the maverick he is, he always strives to cover his tracks, even if it means quoting Alain Jacquet without naming him. Photographic images will be manipulated and minced, as he did at the beginning of the 1980’s when weaving Polaroïd prints in order to only leave the background of the film to appear. The contrast of the original image would have been maximised, the picture would have then been printed and from then on the painter goes into action and suggests his acrylic coloured patterns.
Since 2012, Jean Faucheur’s work became more and more pixelated, which enable him to question his obsession with faces and their disappearance in portraits. The paints-runs on his canvases masking the original picture. This then becomes the starting point of his experimentation.
Où est la photographie? Where is the photography? is an exhibition that questions the relevant distance required in between the artwork and the spectator in order to appreciate the artwork entirely. The artist likes to spread confusion, and blur the lines of the confused spectator. Where is the darkroom hiding amongst these woven paintings? Where does the negative snuggle into these rolls of circled patterns? And finally, where does Jean Faucheur hide in the work he’s been carrying out over the last forty years?
Jean Faucheur is a Parisian underground icon. Launched into the centre stage, he took part in all Indie movements in the early 80’s. With an attractive yet mysterious personality, he is adulated but remains marginalised. Respected by his peers, he is often wrongly underestimated by the market place. This prolific leader was the instigator of the famous Ripoulin Brothers. This group of jolly fellows stuck their paintings onto street advertising billboards. Their dazzling success led them to New York in 1984 to the Tony Shafrazi Gallery which happened to be the regular meeting point for some Warhol, Basquiat & Keith Haring. The group of Frenchies was managed like a rock band, their names were Faucheur, Claude Closky and PiroKao alias Pierre Huyghe. In 2013, the Centre Pompidou organised a retrospective exhibition on Pierre Huyghe, who was only 50 yo at the time.
Jean Faucheur, the exceptionally gifted young man, graduated first in his year, leaving The Art Decos School valedictorian. In 1990, he presented a Solo Show at the FIAC (International Contemporary Art Fair) at the Agnes B. gallery. The exhibition was a huge success, all artworks sold out in a couple of days and before the end of the fair! All had found a buyer! But Faucheur as the free spirited man that he was and still is, chose to lead a path of uncertain grounds rather than follow a ready-made career plan.
Twenty years after leaving behind his first painting on the streets, like a bottle at sea, Faucheur is made guru by the 2000’s post-graffiti generation; a title he accepts as he became the « mirror of someone else ». He doesn’t hesitate to stir up that entire little world in order to follow his work against all odds.
Faucheur is as attracted to light as he is to darkness. Either way, he hides as much as he reveals, and that goes for his painting as well. He has always made the object of his offence disappeared. The Ripoulin abandoned their artwork in the streets but never gave up on their ambition. They believed in the theory of the perfect crime, where there is no body, there is no crime.
« Photography has always been the starting point of his work » as he likes to say. But as the maverick he is, he always strives to cover his tracks, even if it means quoting Alain Jacquet without naming him. Photographic images will be manipulated and minced, as he did at the beginning of the 1980’s when weaving Polaroïd prints in order to only leave the background of the film to appear. The contrast of the original image would have been maximised, the picture would have then been printed and from then on the painter goes into action and suggests his acrylic coloured patterns.
Since 2012, Jean Faucheur’s work became more and more pixelated, which enable him to question his obsession with faces and their disappearance in portraits. The paints-runs on his canvases masking the original picture. This then becomes the starting point of his experimentation.
Où est la photographie? Where is the photography? is an exhibition that questions the relevant distance required in between the artwork and the spectator in order to appreciate the artwork entirely. The artist likes to spread confusion, and blur the lines of the confused spectator. Where is the darkroom hiding amongst these woven paintings? Where does the negative snuggle into these rolls of circled patterns? And finally, where does Jean Faucheur hide in the work he’s been carrying out over the last forty years?
 |
 |
 |
 |