CONTEMPORANÉITÉS DE L’ART

Cyanine | Adrien Jutard by Yves Guignard.

Adrien Jutard’s recent work is a kind of return to his primary vocabulary. Until the 2010s, the artist developed a language based on two intertwined axes. A very assertive, hard-edged drawing, with a clear charcoal line, and exploded, dented and imperfect forms, since they all start from a search.

Alongside this, he developed his own highly personal language of color, enclosing pure pigments diluted between solidified layers of resin. The color remains almost frozen in a liquid state, alive and with incomparable depth.

The two expressions were strongly intertwined around 2015, before color won out and gradually engulfed drawing. The form remained, full, diverse and complex, but charcoal became rarer and less visible. Colors, too, were more numerous, more brutal, more aggressive.

The current exhibition is marked by the return of the line, dancing or spidery, tracing curves that are skulls, embryos, philosopher’s stones. The color behind has never been so deep, but it feels channeled, meditative. At times, the gesture, like a desire to contradict everything, gets in the way and attempts to blur the unity. The series includes many works on paper, a medium long neglected by the artist. It’s a further sign of a return to basics, to scales.