Selected by Sarkis
By means of a rigorous work process, Cédric Nové-Josserand creates on his canvases a live space that operates as an interface between a colourful inwardness and the light from the outside world. His works are junctions between subject and reality and question the pre-eminence of the gesture in painting – or how to paint without touching the canvas, simply by evoking the essence of life. This introspective process allows him to engage with the world, through vibrating images; sublime, inflammable images in fusion.
Nové-Josserand stretches raw linen onto human-sized frames (180 x 180cm, like his height) that he himself builds. He then pours the colours onto the canvas, defining their distribution with precision to respect a certain balance: the frontiers between each layer of colour placed on the surface are left separated by a few centimetres. The consistency of the paint he uses is also subject to meticulous attention: liquid, fluid, transparent, or dense, viscous, thick – the determination of textures is essential to this work process.
Then, Nové-Josserand lifts the frame over his head to allow for the blind transmission of his gestural energy on the surface of the canvas. In the enclosed and defined space of his studio – which he knows down to the centimetre – he engages in a hand-to-hand wrestle with the painting that he handles at arm’s length. In full awareness, he manipulates the frame to generate a movement: his mental projection of the paint moving on canvas dictates variations of pace to his body. Without following any system, he imposes varying fluctuations to the movement of the canvas, at times abrupt and frenetic, at others more reserved and delicate; he may sometimes favour a certain inclination to force the fusion and interlacing of flows of colours gorged with pure pigments, but all the while, he’ll maintain the necessary instability to create these vivid, free-flowing images.
French painter Cédric Nové-Josserand lives and works in Lyon, France. After studying at the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, he received his first exhibition in 1993 in the city’s Musée d’Art Contemporain alongside artist Patrick Neu and more recently participated in the group show Préfiguration at the Centre d’Art Contemporain – Halle des Bouchers in Vienne, France (2014).
This article was first published in the January & February 2016 issue of ArtReview.
