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XAVIER NOIRET-THOME | Bloated Faces & Pop-up

21.01.2013 - 02.03.2013

"Rovers" (from the Pop-Up series), 2009-12, mixed media on canvas, 120 X 100 cm






 


 














AD Gallery presents the solo show of the French artist Xavier Noiret-Thomé entitled BLOATED FACES & POP-UP.

As Pascal argues “to mock philosophy is truly to philosophise”. The same stands for painting; someone who can mock painting can also truly paint. The viewer of Xavier Noiret-Thomé’s works is confronted by the ease with which the gaze can mock what is to be seen. What characterizes a successful painting eventually; a dice throw or the flash of inspiration?

This “detail” asserts itself to the creator’s complacency and it challenges him to dominate the work in order to enable him to set it free. Nowadays, after the explosion of painting of the 1960’s and 70s, it seems necessary to seek for a stance that strips painting of its “hagiography” and its gilded myth. Such a stance could only occur through the deep love, the deep knowledge and comprehension of the issues brought forward by painting in its big moments. Noiret-Thomé uses symbols, textures, materials and references creating works, which are opposed to every kind of melancholy. Since his studies, he has been passionate about the “low culture” of graffiti and comics but also about the “figuration libre” of Robert Cambas and Jean-Michel Basquiat, something prevailent in most of the artists of his generation.

Xavier Noiret-Thomé, finally, accepts the Pascalian experiment by seeking his art’s balance between nothingness and infinity. His admiration and devotion to the work of Leroy, Richter, Dieter Roth, Adrian Schiess, Francis Picabia helped him approach the real wager of painting. A kind of painting that caresses the gaze and attacks it at the same time.

Due to his love of Picabia the painter will adopt a free stance that is not subscribed to any conceptual or formalist manifesto. His self-sarcasm constitutes a valuable reaction especially against the seriousness of the historical conjuncture.    

Exhibition duration: January 21 - March 2, 2013


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