
Artstyle
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23 Mar 2015
Drawing Week
This week from the 24th of March to the 29th of March, drawings and works on paper are celebrated in different art fairs like DDessin and Drawing Now. Drawing enthusiasts will have enough to keep them busy ! On this occasion, Artsper has selected some major artists that work contemporary drawings.
Vanessa Notley
Vanessa Notley is especially attentive, in her work, to shape an element of language, like a word, a phrase, a particular proverb that seems arked by a sense of ridiculous, clumsy or old.
The question of the limit between interior and exterior is central in her creation. Everything that constitutes an obstacle, everything that doesn’t allow moving towards another space, physical or intellectual, speaks to her. Her work of drawing and sculpture plays with the visual aspect of things, their apparent meanings and possible counter-meanings. The animal or human figure is used to display the pictorial process. She tries, often with a cold humor, to give a form to all of this.
The question of the limit between interior and exterior is central in her creation. Everything that constitutes an obstacle, everything that doesn’t allow moving towards another space, physical or intellectual, speaks to her. Her work of drawing and sculpture plays with the visual aspect of things, their apparent meanings and possible counter-meanings. The animal or human figure is used to display the pictorial process. She tries, often with a cold humor, to give a form to all of this.
Maxime Foulon

Maxime Foulon is a painter and illustrator who lives in Lille, France. He works as an illustrator for the Etablissement Public de Santé Mentale (Public Institute for Mental Health) Lille.
Renaud Bargues

His work on paper is an automatic act. He produces series in India ink and keeps, in most cases, the same format. His drawings are black and white, and generally the lines are black on a white background. He sometimes creates the negative of this format: black is dominant and strengthens the mystical, severe and deep effect of the work. Renaud is not afraid of the image, he assumes it and denounces it. Sometimes he includes a few words in English or in French in order to address to as many people as possible, creating a certain interactivity with the viewer. His short phrases reshape reality and use words as clues for the reading his work. Here, drawing is a means of expression for the artist, allowing him not to isolate himself. He uses numerous techniques: on canvas, the artist plays between the contrast of black lines and color. He uses watercolour and felt that he applies on canvas as drippings that are more or less controllable with the help of water spray. We can look for e certain academicism in his gestures on canvas and the intervention of a technique. The role of the color is not the classic one, it does not just fill the form: on the contrary, colors seem to be applied in order to veil or blur the original drawing like a screen.
Jean-Pierre Nadau

During his adolescence, he had a passion for music and cinema. In 1984 he met Chomo, the hermit artist of the Fontainebleau forest, and the meeting marked a revelation in his life. Four years later, he started to make his India ink drawings (using a Sergeant Major pen) on paper or on large canvases: there were saturated compositions with fantastic architectures, various stories and tragicomic scenes. There is always a sexual connotation in them. Some of the themes that fascinate hi are horse races, cyclists and the French gardens. His works are full of characters, fantastic scenes and historical reminders, and are extremely well constructed. The strokes have an exceptional correctness, the graphics are confusing by their rigor and incredible by their exhilarating technique.
Technical prowess makes place to a humor, a vitality and a generous and uncontrolable happiness to create.
A Rabelaisian pleasure, an irony and a sarcasm that give him all his uniqueness…
Technical prowess makes place to a humor, a vitality and a generous and uncontrolable happiness to create.
A Rabelaisian pleasure, an irony and a sarcasm that give him all his uniqueness…

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