Biography
The singularity of Alain Clément’s work lies on the close relations he establishes by constant round-trips between painting and sculpture. These relations are enriched by the practice of engraving to which he has dedicated particular care. As in drawings, this technique allows him to evaluate the situation of his research about the space by insisting on the work of the line. Dimensions, traits, lines and ribbons transform the space of the canvas. They deny this space, they force it, they dig into it, in a work that goes past the formalistic genres and asserts the expressive and polysemous power of painting
Alain Clément was born in 1941 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and now lives and works in Paris and Nîmes. He began painting in the early 1960s. His work, built around recurring subjects, explores the specific qualities and characteristics of the medium: colour, shape, volume and representational modes. For the past twent years he has concentrated on an investigation of artistic processes, including painting, watercolor, sculpture and wall sculpture.
Collaboration History
In 2012, Alain Clément visited South Africa as a resident of the NIROX residency programme. During his stay, he worked on a series of prints at the David Krut Print Workshop (DKW). He worked in gouache and monotype, adding pencil or pencil crayon. Each work contains a layer of black ink, after or before which colour has been hand-painted. Each colour is its own progression, the plate leaving a ghost each time it went through the press and the prints are numbered in sequence in each of the 3 variations – yellow, orange and black. Each except for the first print also has a grey and black layer – a ghost from the previous plate and the new layer.