Fanny Drugeon, March 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Travels in time<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cL\u2019espace est un doute : il me faut sans cesse le marquer, le d\u00e9signer\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Georges Perec, Esp\u00e8ces d\u2019espaces)<\/p>\n\n\n\n First encounters with the paintings of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat at the Mudam, 2008, \u201cAbove all, colour!\u201d passing on to the misleadingly static leeks which were already taunting colour to explosion point even in their titles. Then, \u201cThe detours of abstraction\u201d, 2012, and what detours, what shifts since the pioneers of abstraction!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRegardless of its form\u201d, this precision in the definition of colour, seen as the \u201cnature of a light, the surface of an object\u201d1. resonates in the paintings of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat. At a quick glance they risk being associated with a strictly formal practice. Yet a more attentive look removes any attempt at formalist association. A direct confrontation with a painting a priori immobile where the imprint of the different strata is not immediately perceptible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The territories of experimentation open up and the question of abstraction recoils, just as it did at the end of the 1950\u2019s for artists like Robert Ryman, Frank Stella or Ad Reinhardt. Ryman re-opens the questions linked with abstract art, convinced that what is important is not the subject but the manner of painting. Reinhardt confirms this view and says: \u201cIt is harder to talk orally or in writing about abstract painting than about any other, in that its content cannot be found in a subject [subject matter], or a story, but in the activity of painting itself \u201c2. It is precisely this activity, the fact of painting, which is at the heart of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat\u2019s approach. No sentimentalism but an encounter with painting that goes beyond the subject, even if it is abstract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, while the legacies are many, there is no nostalgia here, just the pursuit of a colour that is not fixed, which evolves with each series, and not the repeat of a formal history. The picture is composed progressively, temporality is integrated into the working process of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat. Yet there is no feeling of laborious effort, which recalls what Matisse wrote to Henry Clifford in February 1948, about the exhibition Clifford was preparing for him in Philadelphia: \u201cI\u2019ve always tried to conceal my efforts, I\u2019ve always wanted my works to have the lightness and joy of springtime which never lets all the hard work be felt.\u201d Exactly what the artist is seeking, despite the need to draw his brush again and again over the canvas, adding matter, colours. All these components that Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat sees in painting, like his view of the old masters\u2019 painting, where the physical approach leads him to observe \u201cthe articulation of paint by each painter: Franz Hals, Tintoretto, Titian, Caravaggio, El Greco\u201d 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Work over the long term is essential, composed of several moments in time: the \u201ccolours\u201d of 2007 for example or the recent Whites. The whole is associated with a \u201cflux\u201d like a vital flux. \u201cMonochrome\u201d is how Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat designates a part of the picture, the part designed to receive colour like Rose (2007), the background, we could have written, but we are not concerned here with substance and form. \u201cThe background colour determines the surface, sets up the terrain, establishes the place, prepares what follows\u201d, the artist explains. The chromatic choreography can now begin, but the monochrome has its full role to play, as dynamic as the colours that are thickly juxtaposed, the various actions take their place. Looking at Blue (2012) for example, the colours coat us, the monochrome reaches its limit, like a standard ready to be infringed, it perturbs the other colours and is perturbed by them. But what exactly are these colours but the presence of the artist, his physical engagement and his choices, clear and free? It\u2019s a question of forms which are not forms, or become forms progressively, but which before were above all colour. Jonathan Lasker speaks of his canvases as \u00ab abstract images \u00bb. The mobility of the viewer\u2019s eye is called into play, it is invited both to move and to remain static for a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Colours going free, weightless. Pink, Yellow, Black. \u2026Colour is omnipresent, a signifying element, but it also designates the picture by the \u201cmonochrome\u201d intermediary chosen by the artist for each canvas. \u201cI want my paintings to defy any naming process and to produce language, so they must not embody anything nameable\u201d 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The means of expression evolve; drawing, initially abandoned as a rejection of constrained, preconceived composition, now returns. And with it, a new way of distributing colours, a return to working on a blank canvas and a greater density of colours\/actions (White, 2014) which will sometimes go as far as to take the place of the background. The transition to the Whites (2014-2015), from paper to canvas, results in the freeing of the monochrome principle as Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat had elaborated it. The operating mode is never fixed. More colours make their appearance or are distributed differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Painting both material and immaterial, visible and invisible, as Merleau-Ponty put it. \u201cIn exhibiting my works I want to determine a space for thought\u201d, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Prat explains, a space for thought, but also a space for thinking the act of painting\u201d. The meaning of painting exists only in the relationship between the viewer and the painter 5.\u201d, declared G\u00fcnter Umberg. In the end, so many travels in time, the time of the painting, of the artist, and of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Le nouveau petit Robert : dictionnaire alphab\u00e9tique et analogique de la langue fran\u00e7aise, 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Ad Reinhardt, \u00ab Abstraction and illustration \u00bb, an unpublished lecture, 1943, in Cahiers du Mnam, n\u00b0 49, Autumn 1994, p. 81-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. An exchange with the artist, 31 March 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Idem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Joseph Marioni, G\u00fcnter Umberg, Outside the cartouche \u2013 Zur Frage des Betrachters in der radicalen Malerei, Munich, Neue Kunst Verlag, 1986, quoted by Christian Besson, \u00ab Abstraction faite du spectateur: absorption, r\u00e9jection, fascination distraction \u00bb, in Tableaux territoires actuels, 1997, Quimper, Le Quartier, p. 78.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fanny Drugeon, March 2015 Travels in time \u201cL\u2019espace est un doute : il me faut sans cesse le marquer, le d\u00e9signer\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-563","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/563\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}