François Paris

Torn between contrary impulses, but which he does not seek to unify, François Paris deploys a singular and offbeat universe.

The artist plays on the interstices of time, the off-camera, the sentimental disillusions and misunderstandings, between images and words, the poetic mise en abyme, dark and without answer, but where the absurdity of existence prevails. Mixture of hope and derision, it leads us to question ourselves on the real futility of our modern lives, a frantic race to chaos, a dark farce that we do not want to see for an immediate enjoyment, instantaneous and without real tomorrow. An impulse towards the worst in a happy melancholy.

These drawings are usually executed in grey pencil and criterium on relatively small sheets of paper and presented in a cloud, however he has also been making larger formats since 2012.

Scene of life, sometimes absurd, family photos, propaganda, worried characters, faces erased, uncertain place imprinted with austerity, incongruous objects, strange interpretations make us fall into the ineffable disaster, through the prism of old slides found, stale images available on the Internet, old forgotten memory cards, the artist takes it to confront us with a kind of precise decomposition of the soul or what is left…

Playing the card essentially of the black and white and a little color, without having any real stylistic preoccupation he draws, as he explains, everything and nothing at the same time, but all the time and everywhere!

This allows him in his programmed wandering, to perceive the contours of disillusionment. Stopping the narrative momentum, he deconstructs the primary meaning of the initial image by reorganizing it through a particular cutting or framing and creating new meanings. (…)

M. F, 2013