Christian Feltin, The Black Footprint, 2017, Acrylic on Canvas

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Acrylic 55x46.
03/15/2017
Trace on the ground where particles have detached from a shape to leave a contrasting imprint.

Painting … Read more Acrylic 55x46.
03/15/2017
Trace on the ground where particles have detached from a shape to leave a contrasting imprint.

Painting is for Christian Feltin the way to rediscover and re-dialogue with his roots, those of his Vietnamese maternal grandparents. He, who grew up in a Western environment and who readily calls himself a Vietnamese quadroon, today uses painting as a means of rediscovering and reclaiming this distant Asia which flows through his veins and colors his leaves and canvases with black, red and gold, these colors characteristic of Asian aesthetics, from lacquered furniture to calligraphy scrolls. An ancestral art which is omnipresent in his works and which he revisits by abandoning ink for acrylic painting. He then hollows out the signs of their scriptural function to develop their plasticity and graphic power and construct abstract architectures or give birth to flexible and aerial forms. We then think of Zao Wou Ki who also liberated calligraphy from writing, as well as Pierre Soulages who knew how to make black an incredible pool of colors.
On a white background, signs of personal and universal writing are born, the reliefs of which play with the ambient light. A pictorial material that he combines and softens with walnut hull that he likes for its binding qualities and the colored nuances that its use pure or in wash allows the artist to explore and which allows him to bring softness and warmth to the weight of the impastos. There are thus the assurance of traces and masses of paint and the slender as well as indecisive fragility of transparencies. A variety of materials and textures which for Christian Feltin make painting a kind of “cooking” of the heart, instinctive and generous. And like any good self-respecting cook, his work is classified according to a nomenclature which is as rigorous as his painting is liberated. Signed by Maker See less