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Jean Denant

Du temps à l'ouvrage
05.23.14 - 07.12.14
Exhibition — Lieu-Commun, artist run space

Du temps à l'ouvrage (2014). Photo Nicolas Brasseur, Toulouse International Art Festival 2014 ©Le Printemps de septembre

Jean Denant, Du temps à l'ouvrage (2014). Photo Nicolas Brasseur, Toulouse International Art Festival 2014 ©Le Printemps de septembre

Jean Denant, Du temps à l'ouvrage, Lieu-Commun (2014). Photo Nicolas Brasseur, Festival international d'art de Toulouse 2014 ©Le Printemps de septembre

Jean Denant, Du temps à l'ouvrage, Lieu-Commun (2014). Photo Nicolas Brasseur, Festival international d'art de Toulouse 2014 ©Le Printemps de septembre

Born in 1979 in Sète (France), he lives and works there.

 
For this new participation in the Toulouse International Festival of Art, the team at Lieu-Commun is happy to invite the Sète-based artist Jean Denant for a new project that will totally recast its exhibition space.


“The work of Jean Denant questions the human in relation to architecture. Considering that this shapes the world in which we move and act, the artist explores human nature through the creative act. Architecture is a contemporary proposition for addressing the real, for trying to apprehend and thus orient the world. But architecture is also more than that in Denant’s work. It is a poetic and philosophical metaphor for talking about the state of the world. Everything, whether buildings or human history, is a matter of construction. What the artist gives us is the work of construction and deconstruction.” Denant refers in a concrete way to the language of building, evoking the two phases of construction: the carcass and the finishing. His paintings tell us about the history of a process. The hanging presented by the Festival is thus an opportunity to set up a dialogue between them, a direct, physical encounter. Architecture institutes a dialogue between being and the world. In his paintings, the artist replays architecture, using simple materials from the builder’s trade.  By appropriating these for artistic purposes, Denant deliberately creates a discrepancy between the nobility of the action and the fragility of the materials. His works challenge definitions and abolish the frontiers between art and the real. Paintings become walls, images turn into narratives and the artist acts as a workman. For Denant, action is key. His gestures speak of the human adventure, and of his home town, Sète, a working class port city.

 

He is represented by Anne de Villepoix gallery at Paris.
 

The art work Réminiscence has been made with the support of Sporting Promotion, and in partnership with À tout sens.