Studio
Besançon, France, 2005 - present
The new installation of Jean-Pierre Sergent studio in Besançon, France will give him the opportunity to show his work into French and European art market. It will also give a chance to European public to discover a painting full of energy and spirituality.
With his paintings, Jean-pierre Sergent is showing us a representational space in-witch images are affirming them-self, and a projection space were signs, words and abstract forms are entangling each other, and bringing us back to the body presence.
His last work do not give any room for matter. Matter and objects have disappeared giving birth to flatness were shape, ground and colors are mixing, interwoven. It is creating a special visual effect of life pulsation energies going forward and backward like blood into the body. This warm feeling is surprising because the silkscreen technic he use have been used by Andy Warhol which created at his time distanced contemporary Icons, staging usually cold and faraway.
This "painting without thickness" is meeting here with courage and violence the drawings from Mexican Maya culture, one of those shamanic cultures the painter like so much. Images silkscreened on plexiglas allow a flow of overlaying feeling with unexpected shapes. The medium is becoming then: "An enclosed, chaotic, ethereal space where several energies mix together, attract each other, harmonize and destroy each other".
Living proof that painting still is a significant contemporary means of expression and always challenged. Jean-Pierre Sergent is giving us back an art full of life: "One must look at my paintings not as paintings, not as art objects, but as some sacred spaces of conflicts and creations."
Extracts from a press article by Laura Franco in "LE MAG" Ornans, France, July 2005
THE TEAM
Technicians : Jean-François Delamain, Emmanuel Grenard, Christine Chatelet.
Press : Emilie Bouglé, Clémentine Davin, Nathalie Zorzi
Webmaster : Cyril Clément
Long Island City Studio, New York, USA, 1995 - 2003
Portraits of an artist at work
July, 2003, edited by Miguel Baltierra
On a Saturday afternoon in April, 2003 my friend Sachie Kumano visited my studio to take portraits of me. Initially I thought it would be a typical photo session. However after she took a few pictures, she asked me if I could begin printing!
I have been painting for more that twenty years and I never allowed anyone to be present while I was working. I always felt that painting is like a secret ritual, where something magical happens as there is always a portal connection to the world, the universe, the unconscious, memories and to the ones we love. I never feel alone when I am working: there is always a spiritual presence in the studio.
So I was a little bit afraid of letting the energy of my process emerge in photographs, yet at the same time afraid that it will not be perceived. Fortunately, I believe the resulting pictures Sachie took that day, with great respect, are true to what is happening when I am painting. I am grateful for the magnificent work she has done.
Through taking photographs I have realized how beautiful the smallest everyday details and all of the living moments are. Photography has made me thankful for the world and my life. I would like to capture the sparkling moments of people integrated in their environments and things we feel invisibly.
Watching Jean Pierre engrossed in his work was inspirational. I hope he knows he is not only creating his art but also he himself is art to me. All of us are art.
Photographer, Sachie Kumano