French Artist André-Pierre Arnal Subverts Formal Elements Of Painting, Gives Viewers ‘Glimmer Of Light’

Line, shape, space, form, tone, texture, pattern, color, and composition are combined and organized in various ways to create what we know as paintings, but that process is often lost on the viewer.

French artist André-Pierre Arnal, an influential figure in the historical Supports/Surfaces movement of the late 1960s, has dedicated his career to reinventing the formal elements of the painting through the examination of its materials. Arnal deconstructs the traditional medium of painting to emphasize how each component of a work should be considered both individually and as a whole.

“The technique, whatever it is, is what links the material and the concept. It’s been so since the dawn of history. And it continues because it is the foundation of creation and culture.” Arnal said. “It is the very progression – the theory and the practice – which must be coherent and pertinent – rather than the end product.”

A solo exhibition of works Arnal created between 1970 and 1986, following the dissolution of Supports/Surfaces movement, is on view through January 21 at Ceysson & Bénétière New York. Arnal uses a variety of techniques, such as crumpling (froissage), folding (pliage), tying up (ficelage), stenciling (pochoirs), rubbing (frottage), tearing up (arrachements), and collage, challenging our perception of painting.

“Ceysson & Bénétière is proud to present our current solo show dedicated to André-Pierre Arnal. As one of the few French galleries in New York, we utilize this exhibition space not only to cater to our clients based in the United States, but also to introduce Arnal and the Supports/Surfaces movement to new audiences, whom may be experiencing his work for the very first time,” said François Ceysson, who, along with Loïc Bénétière, directs galleries in Geneva, Lyon, France, Paris, Koerich, Luxembourg, and New York “Our New York gallery is vital to fostering intercultural dialogue and sparking new understandings about the history of art.”

The warm palettes of the works on view contrast with Arnal’s more usual greens, blues, and grays. Each piece embraces us with a sunny, tellurian solace, evoking a range of emotions and whisking us away from winter, even if this one has been unusually mild. They offer an escape, a much-needed uplift when we’re craving sunlight.

“The colors of the paint invite you into a parallel world, fragile, where anxiety for all the misery and victims on our planet doesn’t exist. The colors of the paint are only a counterbalance, a candle flame besides an atomic conflagration,” Arnal explained of the colors he chose in the 1970s and 1980s. “But this glimmer of light constitutes part of the last areas of liberty.”

Born 1939 in Nimes, France, Arnal lives and works in Paris. Arnal trained in the visual arts at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts, where he discovered Matisse, American abstract painters, and Paul Klee. Besides his experimental paintings, Arnal has written some 200 “unique books” which associate hand-written poetic texts and abstract compositions, including Lignes de mains/Hand Lines, produced in 1990 for the exhibition Supports/Surfaces le bel âge, presented at Château de Chambord.

After his Monotypes in the 1960s, Arnal focused on a series of “folds” on canvas to visually break down and analyze the components of the work of art. Rather than working on the support with lines and signs, Arnal incorporated the canvas itself in the process of creating the work.