Basecoat | Adrien Jutard

“Basecoat” is the English word inscribed on his paint pots that Adrien Jutard has chosen for the title of his exhibition. He likes the sound of this word, which literally means “basecoat”. A term derived from the pigment chemical industry, ‘basecoat’ defines a range of bright, very pure colours, intended to serve as the basis for countless shades. In a way, it’s what the jargon in painting calls a “primary colour”, but transposed here for technical and industrial applications.

This new series of works is a metaphor for the initial gesture, the founding impulse, the desire that is the starting point of the creative act, like a postulate to validate the meaning of the initial impulse. In the artist’s process, each layer is approached as a new beginning. The result is the sum of all these beginnings, like so many “basecoats”. With each layer, and even if the painting evolves, the artist is obliged, by the very constraint of the material, to conceive of each layer not as a stage, but as a vector that must from the outset contain the totality of the expression.