Emmanuel Van der Meulen

Born in Paris in 1972, he lives there and works in Nogent sur Marne (France).

At the Château d’Eau painter Emmanuel Meulen has been invited to continue the research he began during his residency at the Villa Medici in 2012 –13 into the inscription of painting within architecture. If he has chosen the picture support as his favoured medium, for him the relation between this, the space around it and the physical situation of the beholder has always been a key factor. Colour, and its particular presence, is the centre of his work, as it is of his paintings. 

Big elementary figures painted in monumental formats punctuate the exhibition, which is set out over several stations. Tondi (round canvases) complete the cycle. By limiting his work to these simple forms, to a certain economy of means, Emmanuel Van der Meulen manages to distance, or at least delay, representation, in whatever form, in order to present the gaze with the specific elements of painting, to attract the eye, before or beyond the realm of everyday vision.

"In the sharing with the beholder, these few simple forms are the minimum for recognition. They are immediately visible: we can move on to something else. We can go beyond recognition of what is to be seen on the pictureobject and come to the experience of the painting as such." * E. Van der Meulen, interview with Éric de Chassey, Emmanuel Van der Meulen. Enten – Eller. Tableaux 2006–2008. Paris: Lienart – Galerie Jean Fournier, 2009, n.p. 

This work recalls the radicalism of minimalism and the art of major contemporary artists such as Blinky Palermo and Günther Förg, but it is ultimately rooted in the much older history of premodern art, of ornament and of decorative painting. The group of paintings shown at the Château d’Eau are thus very freely inspired by the geometrical visions of Hildegard of Bingen, as described in the Book of Divine Works.