Yves Popet

Overview

Horizontal and vertical, Yves Popet's lines and shapes are based exclusively on the square. Working methodically, the artist combines colors to highlight the volumes that emerge from his paintings and dry pastels.

Yves Popet continues to experiment with the square shape in his work. He finds a sense of "déjà vu" in the study of monochrome, and wishes to take greater advantage of the emptiness of this form. To this end, he chose to introduce lines into his shapes, first black and white, then colored. But soon, a sense of exhaustion with the single square shape became apparent. He decided to cut his squares into quarters, then into eighths, to reinvigorate the initial shape.

Wishing to "show the square through the outer band" by asserting only the angles, Yves Popet submits himself to a demanding task. He is constantly in search of novelty with an elementary motif, not wanting to spend his career making lines "bordering space". However, the continuous representation of horizontal and vertical lines characterizes his work, energizing "the perfect form par excellence".

"I have refined my work until I have only one straight, horizontal, vertical line in a square."

The square is at the heart of the artist's work, which focuses on "opening up space". Thanks to the different ways in which it appears to us, the artist chooses to show us this form, by creating lines, thus letting us guess a shape, or, by a play of colors highlighting a dominant presence. The chosen color combinations stimulate the eye.

Yves Popet's work is also a reflection on the shape of the square and the balance it creates through its simplicity. He shows us how, from the most banal of shapes, multiple variations can emerge...

The line at the edge of a painting is just as important to Popet as the line that forms the squares in his interior. It opens up an infinite range of variations between the shapes present and the void...

"By widening a dark band that encircles a painting, the impression of emptiness is already no longer the same."

This exhibition presents Yves Popet's artworks from the period 2016 to 2024. It brings together a majority of dry pastels on paper, a technique introduced into the artist's career in the 1980s. Painted autonomously, the works, depending on the shapes or colors chosen and in a manner as rational as they are haphazard, can be used to create series.