Press Release

Nicolas Delprat
October 26, 1997 - February 1, 1998

“The subject of my work lies in the paint itself, and the different ways it can appear on materials. I usually set up an arrangement designed to produce a painterly situation. The approach for the MAGASIN cafeteria doesn't contradict the stance taken in my work. In my pictures, the experiment unfolds within the painting and not in the hanging in a given venue. The difference here lies in the possibilities a three-dimensional space has to offer me.“

For his exhibition at the MAGASIN, Nicolas Delprat occupies the glassed-in part of the cafeteria, together with an inner wall. From outside, you can see monochrome squares and make out, inside, a different handling of colour, which prompts the visitor to venture into the area. His technique involves spreading paint (five successive coats, in a different order) on strips of plastic film. The overlay of colours creates a host of variables. Using this process, the artist endeavours to scale down his own involvement in and responsibility for the result obtained, by producing the same repetitive gesture -a gesture that covers one coat of paint with another.
The painted plastic film is then cut up into squares, stuck to the final surface, and then detached from the paint, which now bears traces of the various phases undergone.
Paint, here, is reduced to its strictly material quality, and taken to its limit, particularly where its capacity to adhere to a plastic surface is concerned.
Nicolas Delprat stays aloof from the idea of decor, and causes pictorial "accidents", by creating breaks (random arrangement of squares), and by letting the marks caused by the different manipulations (creases in the plastic, bubbles of glue) remain in the paint.

Nicolas Delprat, born in 1972, lives and works in Lyons. Graduated in 1997 from the National School of Fine Arts in Lyons. Currently taking a postgraduate at Nantes Art School.