born 1960 in Sallanches (Haute-savoie) Lives and works in Lyon,Ffrance

The artist is represented by la Galerie Zurcher, Paris

After his exhibition at the Pompidou centre in 2006, at the Musée d’Art contemporain de Lyon, the musée de l’Abbaye de Sainte-Croix des Sables d’Olonne and the Musée d’Art contemporain de Strasbourg, Marc Desgrandchamps is invited to realise a personal exhibition in the 500m2, two-floor space of the Creux de l’Enfer. The artist represents today a renewal in figurative painting, to which many artists of a new generation refer. After having been inspired by academic masters, and having questioned himself of the role of the painting in modernity, Marc Desgrandchamps has mastered a personal style of painting, of grotesque consciousness and serene appearances. The exhibition at the Creux de l’Enfer is composed of 20 oil paintings, mainly on canvas and in large format. The sea, beach, trees, birds, horses, blue summer skies are superimposed and disintegrate in a reoccurring manner. Within this archetypal representation of nature, characters of evanescent traits and banal behaviour slide and ooze, in standing or sitting position, affirming themselves less than erasing themselves in their contained joy. In this dimension of green naturalism and sombre sepia, the fluid and translucent materiality of paint workied from photographs and archive documents translates a fragile reality in which the present shatters on the existentialist cloud. The characters, be they at the paintings’ foreground or in the distance, or the landscape, be it a beach or urban scene, erase themselves, becoming immaterial in the present which has no significance. Treated in oil or gouache, on canvas or paper, the subject of the painting takes on life in its incomparable pictorial technique.

 Frédéric Bouglé, 2007

 Translation Emilie Charlesworth, Saatchi Gallery, London

Expositions récentes (sélection > 2000) :

2006
Peintures / Painting
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
Marc Desgrandchamps
Centre Pompidou - Musée National d´Art Moderne, Paris

2005
Anthropography III
Frissiras Museum, Athens
Artliason - BonnLyon: Marc Desgrandchamps - Stand der Dinge
Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn
My Favorite Things - Peinture en France
Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon, Lyon

2004
Marc Desgrandchamps
Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon, Lyon
MARC DESGRANDCHAMPS
Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCS), Strasbourg
Supernatural
Galerie Zürcher, Paris
Is One Thing Better Than Another?
Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Berlin
VOIR EN PEINTURE
The Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw

2003
Voir en peinture
Frac Ile-de-France - Le Plateau, Paris

2002
Marc DESGRANDCHAMPS - "Les délaissements"
Galerie Charlotte Moser, Geneva