In this exhibition, which inaugurates the new collaboration between the artist and the gallery, Claude Viallat presents a series of large colored canvases scattered with his “signs”. The works are made, for the majority, by reusing parts of camping tents as support, in which hinges, laces, ropes and elastic bands remain visible. Claude Viallat (Nîmes, 1936) has been working since 1966 focusing on the intuition of a primitive and essential anti-form, which is freed from the pictorial experience of subjective expression, in order to achieve neutrality and “anonymity” of the repetitive production within the lightness of the canvas hung on the wall and scattered with “signs”.

This form, distinctive and inimitable, is simple, essential and hypnotic at the same time. We cannot speak of Claude Viallat’s anti-forms without considering those practices that are not purely pictorial, which are also part of his work. This need is expressed in that unstable and mobile character which is the uncommon support: canvases, tarpaulins and curtains host the anti-forms, highlighting the inherent need to merge with the object; and also in the attitude of the “forms” to develop in space, saturating it, becoming part of it.

An idea that is strengthened as a desire to make the work coexist with the object/support, not only by sharing the space, but by becoming a work; in facts the supports always reveal their presence, the basic color becomes an essential part of the work and the remains of previous uses (ropes, elastic) remain visible in the finished work. Also for this exhibition a monograph with texts by Luca Massimo Barbero and Annamaria Maggi will be published in co-edition with Charta, which will illustrate the artist’s career from 1966 to the present.