Yves Popet

French artist Yves Popet was born in 1946 in Reims

He lives and works in Paris

He has been exhibiting at the Oniris gallery since 2010

For more than thirty years, Yves Popet has borrowed a number of elements from concrete art in his work through techniques, formal compositions, such as the use of the square, and in colours.

I have refined my work to the point of having only a straight, horizontal, vertical line in a square.

Far from searching for any meaning in the choice of the square, but also in the choice of its colours, Yves Popet proposes here a reflection on this form and the balance it establishes. This reflection then gives rise to real games. In these colourful games, the shape is imposing by its simplicity. Yves Popet shows us how, starting from the simplest possible form, multiple variations may appear.

Starting from his hand-applied pastels, which combine contemporary formal research and ancient techniques, he then creates colourful associations: in the pastels and then in the canvases, any colour agreement is possible. Colour seems to construct the works and sets up compositions that make it materially present. Thus, the contrasts created open up the space and diversify it.

Little attracted by pure monochrome, the artist associates one coloured surface to another, provoking pictorial oppositions that bring movement. The dynamics in the square caused by different kinds of horizontal and vertical cuts, the colours laid down in saturated solid areas, which seem apparently smooth, as well as the edges of the painted pictures, extend the canvas and propose an expansive dimension, inviting our imagination to continue the construction. The surfaces, which are flat at the base, have a full volume rendering and become mobile.