L'ATLAS (Jules Dedet Granel)

Speerstra Gallery Switzerland - L'Atlas "Dissolutions"

from 2017-05-13 to 2017-06-24

The Speerstra Gallery presents "Dissolutions" by French artist L'Atlas.

As a self-taught calligraphist, I am obsessed by a certain idea of perfection, a universal order of things that reaches even into the place of each letter in a word, on a given space, be it a sheet of paper, a canvas or a wall. I am convinced that by finding the right place for each thing, in this instance for each letter, I will find my own place here on earth; in other words I believe that external order can enlighten the inner chaos within each of us.

This is why I tidy my desk and my studio each day, before starting work; it’s a habit I picked up from watching calligraphers laying out their tools almost obsessively on their table before beginning their work; it is in fact a meditative practise, aimed at focusing the mind on an object, abstracting the rest of the world, in order to approach aesthetic perfection.

In this series of works, I have tried to convey simultaneously both the order and the chaos. The linear aspect of my cryptograms, the depth of perspective of a square within a square, the formal repetition of the body, eye or base of the letters create a structuring rhythm and cadence, revealing a concentric calligraphic seal. In contrast to this seeming rigidity, I mixed several lacquers together, endeavouring to create a chaotic magma, a primary and telluric energy that constitutes the basic matter of the seal.

In this way, I hope to render both the purity of calligraphy and the magical power of paint. The technical procedure used in the ‘Dissolutions’ series is inspired by Chinese seals; instead of marble, I used wood to manufacture giant stamps that enabled me to create these calligraphic monotypes. I’m building bridges between the ancestral handiwork of seal-making and serial graffiti work.