ALAIN SECHAS

ALAIN SECHAS

ALAIN SÉCHAS September 5 – Octobre 17, 2015
My Favorite things
Is Alain Séchas writing a chapter of his life as an artist by bringing back his cat-headed beanpoles in his paintings ? (I will not make anymore abstract art ?) It may be that the paintings he is exhibiting today shed a retrospective light on his artistic watershed which began a few years ago, but one might also think that they are something else and something more than that: a personal manifesto. Therefore, here is a series of variations about couples as characters and as situations. Couples strolling or (often) at the beach who alone could embody a new genre. Séchas paints couples as others paint animals, still-lives or landscapes. He creates his paintings using their silhouettes as if they were taking hold of the surface but sometimes he starts of with a harmony of blue and yellow, then in a glimpse he draws an outline and intensifies the two with a perfectly balanced dog giving them cohesion and a certain posture ( Green and Golde n Y ellow Dog ).
Because they respond to our idea of a painting – as an object and as a common vision about art – these genre scenes have – despite their awckwardness or confusion – something reassuring. The argument boils down to very little, the scathing humor of a basic sole situation : « le vivre ensemble » (note : social skills), and the formats, leave very little space to flights of lyricism ; leading to odd situations where raging stains stand for towels blown away by the wind, where a long black stroke unlikely divides the sand, the figures and the sea ( Yellow Towel ), where red cat shadows get tangled in white streamers and come out as a pool of blood ( Reds ).
Through those falsely calm pieces, Séchas invents a new way of holding on, of demonstrating his acute awareness of the limits of the artistic expression and of his ambivalence between the artist and the citizen. Two intentions seem to be arguing over power and orientation of the piece : The choice for weakness as the driving force for creation (Nauman) or the promise for beauty for all (Koons). On one side, Promenade in Bruges where the Northern sky naturally shades off the figures, or Ocher and Blue Couple (the expression as deletion or vice versa) ; on the other side, Red Buoy evokes a Buffet chasing El Greco. Therefore the address to us strollers and bathers is constantly crossed by pure intensities, abstract lines coming out either as the corner of a towel or as an arm or as anything else. Each painting is strengthened by the fact that it belongs to a series, with its deal of monotony, but also with its discoveries and its shocks just like this orange mat that seems to be carrying a profound existential tragedy.
Séchas blurs the distinction between a metaphysical painting (these figures, stuck between interrogations and exclamations, these bicycle wheels laying on the sand, looking almost human) and an instant painting ( Blue Path , Red Motorbike ). Unless the ubiquitous beach was signing the end of metaphysics and the unfortunate return to Greekness. In this encounter between the ideal and the contingent, the comic force of the social chronic (still present in the blue paintings on paper) fades away in favor of a boundless search for the oceanic feeling.
Patrick Javault

Alain Séchas
Born in 1955 at Colombes, France Lives and works in Paris, France
Solo exhibition
2016
Alain Séchas , Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
2015
Alain Séchas , Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris
2013 Eight drawings of FRAC Aquitaine exhibit in the seat hall of Journal Sud Ouest
2012 Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France Without cyma and without pants , a proposition of Alain Séchas guest by Blandine Chavanne, director of Beaux-Arts of Nantes and Jean de Loisy, director of Palais de Tokyo in Paris (The chapel of Immaculate, the Passage Saint-Croix, The building CGA/NGE, Regional architecture house, the Palace of Justice and Museum of Jules-Verne in Nantes and Le Palais de Tokyo in Paris) 2011 FIAC, (International Contemporary Art Fair), Jardin des Plantes, National Museum of Natural History, Platée , 2005, 2010 Galerie Baronian-Francey, Brussels, Belgium
2009 Alain Séchas, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France Marouflette, in the context of the exhibition Jeffmute, MAMCO, Geneva, Swiss Ping, Pang, Pong , Gallery Pietro Spartà, Chagny, France
2008 Night and day, Forum Hermès, Tokyo, Japan Broken dream, Musée Bourdelle, Paris, France Totem and kitten, sculpture commissioned by the city of Cologny, Swiss Beau window, Depot-window, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France
2007
Last Cats , FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen, France The great smokers , request for the park MAC/VAL, Museum of contemporary art of Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France
2006
Magic slate , Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France White night , Stable of Saint-Hugues, Cluny, France The amateur prints , Office graphics art, Museum of Fine art, Tourcoing, France Insomnia , Frac Limousin, « The Collaborator », Impasse of Charentes, Limoges, France 2005 Inauguration of The Cyclist , the angle of the street of l’Écuyer and Montagne aux Herbes Potagères, Brussels, Belgium Jurassic Pork II , Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
2003 Galerie Charlotte Moser, Geneva, Swiss Galerie Pietro Spartà, Chagny, France Galerie Unlimited (Athens), for contemporary art fair, Art Dealers, Marseille, France
2002
The sleepwalker, Chapel Saint-Louis de La Salpêtrière, for the Festival d'Automne 2002, Paris, France
Trivial pursuit , Mamco, Geneva, Swiss The octopus , Chapel Genéteil, Château-Gontier, France
2001
Jurassic Pork , Le Consortium, Dijon, France A. Séchas, artworks from the collection FRAC Limousin, Chapel St Libéral, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France A. Séchas, news artworks , Galerie Albert Baronian, kanal 20, Brussels, Belgium Exhibition Alain Séchas , Museum modern and Contemporary of Strasbourg, France 2000 Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris, France
1999 Galerie Commune du Pôle Arts Plastiques, ERSEP-University of Lille III, Tourcoing, France Triplechaton , public order, Le Safran, Amiens, France – and exhibition in Carré Noir Exhibition Space Gustave Fayet, Sérignan, France Exhibition Solo 12, Kunst Museum, Bonn, Germany
1998
A horse exhibition , Center Contemporary Art, Le Parvis 3, Pau and Le Parvis, Ibos, France Culturgest, Caixa Geral de Depositos, Lisbon, Portugal
1997 Galerie Camargo Vilaça, Sao Paulo, Brasil Super - Kitten, College G. Péri de Bezons, order public of conseil Général du Val d'Oise, France Exhibition Alain Séchas , Fondation Cartier, Paris, France Animator , movie and exhibition produce in collaboration with the students from Museum of Fine art, of Nîmes, France 1996 Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brasil
1995 Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris, France The pit of hell , Art center of Thiers, France Galerie Française de la place Navonne, Rome, Italy
1994
The octopus, Frac Auvergne, Mauriac, Le Puy-en-Velay, France Theater of Évreux, Order public, Évreux, France 1993 Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels, Belgium 1992 Hôtel des Arts, Paris, France 1991 Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris, France 1990 La Criée, Contemporary Art center, Rennes, France
1988 Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels, Belgium Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris
1987 A.P.A.C., Nevers, France Galerie Winttenbrink, Munich, Germany 1985 Galerie Crousel-Hussenot, Paris, France 1984 Exhibition SAFE, Hagondange, France
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