gregory valentin

Grégory Valentin is a French artist born in 1977. Trained as an architect, his work in plastic creation unfolds through a cycle where literature holds a central place. The significant texts chosen by the artist are much more than raw material exploited for the purpose of creation. They become, in the diversity of their representation, sources of reflection regarding their presence, fragility, and permanence in our society.

In the series of paintings titled "especedelivre," Grégory Valentin faithfully reproduces entire literary works, which combine universality with an intimate connection to his own journey. Initiated with Maupassant's "Le Horla," the series explores the implications of a quest to transform literature into a plastic artwork.

Each painting initially presents itself as an abstraction, offering a realm of possibilities for interpretation. This abstraction, a prelude to the awakening of emotion, invites one to approach the painting: the text is there, uninterrupted, at the edges of legibility, in an economy of means, yet meticulously composed according to rules dictated by the format and the artist. It's transposed but preserved from distortion.

The artist's gesture, in extracting a literary work from its natural habitat, is far from insignificant. While the veil of abstraction shields the text from direct exposure, from an abrupt unveiling, it is now liberated from the confines of the book and the library. It gains an immediacy of presence, as one only needs to pass by, approach, to embrace it with one's gaze, or even be captivated by certain passages. Thus, through an unusual intrusion of literature, Grégory Valentin encourages us to contemplate the place attributed in our society to these monuments of human thought, to question the fragility of the presence, in our lives, of texts that are nevertheless universal, anchored in the collective imagination.