Stéphane Dafflon

Born in 1972 in Switzerland, he lives and works in Geneva.

Stéphane Dafflon was invited to conceive a work for COVIVIO's building on the edge of the Canal du Midi. He chose to place it on the ceiling of the forecourt that is the access to the building while remaining visible to the passers-by on the Boulevard de la Marquette. His intervention thus remains public whilst addressing itself specifically to the building's users. The artist's second choice was to base his composition on the structure presented by the metal tiles that cover the ceiling. They offered a grid design that allowed him to concentrate his work on the ceiling's colouring.

Green and blue appeared essential to Stéphane Dafflon because of the terrace's roof garden and the trees on the dock that clearly suggested nat- ural green whereas the idea of the canal's water and the southern sky sum- mon blue. Hence this shaded composition, from lightest to darkest, mov- ing inwards, following a diagonal line that frees itself from the structure's right-angled characteristic, seemingly an invitation to climb the steps to the platform. The work's title is also that of a famous jazz piece played by Miles Davis. This musical reference underlines the melodic nature of this painting whose tone goes from the brightest to the darkest, that is to say the melancholy of the blues; united with the vitality of yellow, the freshness of green emerges.

Initially created on-screen and then transposed to a canvas or a wall, the seemingly simple, smooth and perfectly controlled works of Stéphane Dafflon take on their meaning once they become part of their environment; they change the way the viewer perceives it as much visually as physically, whether they are paintings on canvas, murals or objects. His artistic process is part of the trend of historical movements of modernity, whose formalism he replays by giving his paintings a vibratory power like the sound and music that inspires him. Stéphane Dafflon graduated from the École Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne en 1999 where he now teaches. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Mamco in Geneva, at the Contemporary Art Institute in Copenhagen at the Villa Arson in Nice as well as the Plateau in Paris.