Yves Popet at Galerie Oniris in Rennes: The Square, Color, and Dry Pastel at the Heart of Abstract Painting

From February 9 to March 30, 2024, Galerie Oniris in Rennes presents a solo exhibition featuring recent works by Yves Popet, bringing together paintings and dry pastel works created between 2016 and 2024. Through a rigorous exploration of the square, line, and color, the artist develops a form of geometric abstract painting in which shapes and spaces interact with subtlety. The exhibition particularly highlights his use of dry pastel on paper, a technique he has explored since the 1980s and which plays an important role in his artistic practice.

Yves Popet: An Exhibition Dedicated to Abstract Painting and Dry Pastel in Rennes

With this solo exhibition, Galerie Oniris invites visitors to discover a selection of recent works by Yves Popet, an artist whose practice is rooted in an in-depth exploration of geometry, color, and pictorial space. Presented in Rennes from February 9 to March 30, 2024, the works span the 2016–2024 period and bring together primarily dry pastel works on paper alongside paintings.

The square is the starting point of his artistic vocabulary. Using this elementary geometric shape, Yves Popet develops compositions based on horizontal and vertical lines, divisions of space, and color combinations. His work reflects an ongoing search for renewal through an intentionally simple motif. The exhibition reveals how a familiar shape such as the square can become a field of artistic experimentation, where every line, color, and empty space contributes to the balance of the composition.

Dry Pastel on Paper: An Essential Technique in Yves Popet's Work

Introduced into his artistic practice in the 1980s, dry pastel plays an important role in Yves Popet's work. This technique allows him to explore the relationships between color, surface, and geometric structure with great precision. In his works on paper, the artist methodically combines colors to bring out volumes and different perceptions of space.

Color is never merely decorative: it plays a direct role in the construction of each work and in the perception of its forms. Through contrasts and subtle variations, it gives particular presence to lines and surfaces.

Dry pastel also provides Yves Popet with an ideal medium for experimenting with chromatic variations. Individual compositions can stand alone or be brought into dialogue with other works to form series. These connections reveal new relationships between shapes and colors while preserving the independence of each creation.

Most of the works featured in this exhibition are dry pastel on paper. They demonstrate the richness of this technique in developing a geometric abstraction that is simultaneously rigorous, expressive, and open to multiple interpretations.

The Square: A Geometric Shape at the Heart of the Artist's Practice

For several decades, Yves Popet has developed an in-depth exploration of the square, a geometric shape he considers the fundamental support of his work. Horizontal and vertical lines structure his compositions and organize the relationships between different surfaces.

Over time, the artist has moved beyond the simple monochromatic representation of the square. He first introduced black and white lines, followed by colored lines, before dividing the original shape into four and then eight sections. These transformations allow him to renew the visual possibilities of an elementary motif without abandoning its geometric structure.

His approach sometimes consists of suggesting the square rather than depicting it in its entirety. By emphasizing only its corners or edges, Yves Popet invites viewers to mentally reconstruct the shape. The line thus becomes a tool for construction and perception, while empty space plays an essential role in the balance of the artwork.

As the artist explains: “I have refined my work to the point where all that remains is a straight line, horizontal or vertical, within a square.” This pursuit of simplicity reveals the remarkable range of possibilities offered by seemingly minimal geometry.

Color and Empty Space: Opening Up Space in Yves Popet's Paintings

Yves Popet's paintings are not limited to a rigorous arrangement of lines and shapes. They also reflect a sensitive exploration of empty space and the way it transforms our perception of the composition.

The interior lines that structure the squares are just as important as the borders that define the paintings. Even a slight change in the width of a colored band can profoundly alter the impression of space. The artist plays with the relationships between visible shapes and the areas left open.

Color combinations further develop this exploration. Depending on the selected hues, certain shapes become dominant, while others seem to fade away or extend into the surrounding space. The viewer's eye is constantly engaged by these balances and chromatic variations.

Yves Popet's work therefore offers a visual experience in which the simplicity of shapes becomes an inexhaustible source of variation. Both painting and dry pastel reveal their ability to transform our perception of the square, the line, and empty space.

An Exhibition of Paintings and Dry Pastels Created Between 2016 and 2024

The exhibition at Galerie Oniris brings together works by Yves Popet created between 2016 and 2024. It presents several aspects of his practice, featuring primarily dry pastel works on paper alongside paintings that explore the same formal concerns.

Each work is conceived as an independent piece, yet their shapes and colors can also establish connections and give rise to series. These groupings reveal the different possibilities of a shared geometric vocabulary and demonstrate the artist's ability to continually renew his artistic research.

This presentation offers an insight into the coherence of an artistic practice developed over several decades, where geometric precision meets the freedom of chromatic associations.

Galerie Oniris in Rennes: A Leading Venue for Contemporary Abstract Painting

Located at 38 rue d'Antrain in Rennes, Galerie Oniris has been contributing to the development and promotion of contemporary art in Brittany and western France since 1986. Its exhibition program places particular emphasis on contemporary painting, abstraction, and artistic explorations of color and geometry.

By presenting Yves Popet's work, the gallery continues its commitment to artists whose practices explore the possibilities of contemporary art. This exhibition is part of Galerie Oniris's long-standing history of supporting artists with distinctive artistic visions and contributing to the visibility of contemporary art in Rennes.