Michel Carmantrand, 2025

 

michel carmantrand carmantrand@gmail.com Orchard of symmetrickal mirrors, oil, acrylic, gesso, marker, cardboard, wooden painting boards, fabric, stretcher and cutout. The white of the square diamond was painted after the brushstrokes of the edges, layer upon layer, in order to achieve a precise luminosity. If it had been painted before, the elements would probably have been disconnected. It should not be a dazzling white, nor a dull white and as if buried in the wood of the surface. This white had to be a color. Had the small pleasure of noticing on this delicate occasion that neither the left nor the right hand were shaking. The "orange-vermillion" one on the right, just like the small one on the left, is already a few years old, and contrary to what one might believe at first glance, it results from a rather complex process, the development and chronology of which i have more or less forgotten; but imagine that at the very beginning, this painting was all blue, and that this blue was spread over a canvas (itself firmly glued to the wooden painting board). And when you look closely, in real life, you can see that the color was not applied with a brush, but pressed against the support, so to say crushed between a piece of canvas and the wood. Other than that, as you can see, i'm more than detached from the thematic of style. It is not very good for sales, i've heard, but, heyyyy, it's my pace. If i were to show them one day, i'd like to set up this kind of configuration where the spacing and the wall play an active role in the constellation, and not like a row of onions, as too often in galleries still today (poor Kasimir, you will have struggled in vain...), where the works are on the game as along a sidewalk at night in the hot quarter of a border town​.
Orchard of symmetrickal mirrors, oil, acrylic, gesso, marker, cardboard, wooden painting boards, fabric, stretcher and cutout. The white of the square diamond was painted after the brushstrokes of the edges, layer upon layer, in order to achieve a precise luminosity. If it had been painted before, the elements would probably have been disconnected. It should not be a dazzling white, nor a dull white and as if buried in the wood of the surface. This white had to be a color. Had the small pleasure of noticing on this delicate occasion that neither the left nor the right hand were shaking. The "orange-vermillion" one on the right, just like the small one on the left, is already a few years old, and contrary to what one might believe at first glance, it results from a rather complex process, the development and chronology of which i have more or less forgotten; but imagine that at the very beginning, this painting was all blue, and that this blue was spread over a canvas (itself firmly glued to the wooden painting board). And when you look closely, in real life, you can see that the color was not applied with a brush, but pressed against the support, so to say crushed between a piece of canvas and the wood. Other than that, as you can see, i'm more than detached from the thematic of style. It is not very good for sales, i've heard, but, heyyyy, it's my pace. If i were to show them one day, i'd like to set up this kind of configuration where the spacing and the wall play an active role in the constellation, and not like a row of onions, as too often in galleries still today (poor Kasimir, you will have struggled in vain...), where the works are on the game as along a sidewalk at night in the hot quarter of a border town​.




















Michel Carmantrand Squarely squared, 150x150x20cm (59x59x8"), lacquer paint on paper. A part of my time, day or night, consists of recalling words, translating words (in English and German to French or from French to German or English, and in Latin, sometimes), shaping sentences, combining words, melting them into hybrids, molding words that don't exist, inverting them, organizing them into phrases, sentences, puns, breaking them down and recomposing them, pronouncing them in silence among surreptitious notes, confused thoughts awaiting clarification, rare flashes, embryos of texts to be developed which never will be, and so on. And it is from the inarticulate void between all these, in the more than silent reverse of language that painting arises. It's where the word is missing, in the hole, that painting can manifest it self. But i don't believe this kind of childish language activity is scarce, i'm even sure it's perfectly commonplace in one way or another (we are vessels as full of words as of blood), i'm perhaps just a little more attentive to it than some others, reflecting this process more deliberately, let's say. A kind of gymnastics whose results i forget as i go along, naturally... I once saw a photo captioned, a joke which not only made me chuckle, internally, but produced a certain echo, internally. Side by side, from the front and quite close, a horse and a smiling attractive young woman. The horse is quite a horse, tall, brown, with its big bony head and its pointed ears. The smiling young woman is in a bikini and wears a generous chest in addition. The caption says: "She surely knows that we look at her more than we look at her dog". Nice trap. Anyway and anyhow, translation is a big topic: how to translate something into anything from a language that doesn't exist as a language? It can be the slightly psychotic part of the job. As for the rest, let's not be too pessimistic, this new year is not starting so badly after all: Jean-Marie Le Pen passed away.
Squarely squared, 150x150x20cm (59x59x8"), lacquer paint on paper. A part of my time, day or night, consists of recalling words, translating words (in English and German to French or from French to German or English, and in Latin, sometimes), shaping sentences, combining words, melting them into hybrids, molding words that don't exist, inverting them, organizing them into phrases, sentences, puns, breaking them down and recomposing them, pronouncing them in silence among surreptitious notes, confused thoughts awaiting clarification, rare flashes, embryos of texts to be developed which never will be, and so on. And it is from the inarticulate void between all these, in the more than silent reverse of language that painting arises. It's where the word is missing, in the hole, that painting can manifest it self. But i don't believe this kind of childish language activity is scarce, i'm even sure it's perfectly commonplace in one way or another (we are vessels as full of words as of blood), i'm perhaps just a little more attentive to it than some others, reflecting this process more deliberately, let's say. A kind of gymnastics whose results i forget as i go along, naturally... I once saw a photo captioned, a joke which not only made me chuckle, internally, but produced a certain echo, internally. Side by side, from the front and quite close, a horse and a smiling attractive young woman. The horse is quite a horse, tall, brown, with its big bony head and its pointed ears. The smiling young woman is in a bikini and wears a generous chest in addition. The caption says: "She surely knows that we look at her more than we look at her dog". Nice trap. Anyway and anyhow, translation is a big topic: how to translate something into anything from a language that doesn't exist as a language? It can be the slightly psychotic part of the job. As for the rest, let's not be too pessimistic, this new year is not starting so badly after all: Jean-Marie Le Pen passed away.