French Artist L'Atlas Reinvents Calligraphy With His Gestural Geometry Technique And Releases A New Monograph
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Loading... - Mido Nabil
- 03 Nov 2022
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“It’s between something totally gestural and something totally controlled. Normally in calligraphy, you don’t use rulers, but I wanted to do a kind of gestural geometry,” explains L’Atlas aka Jules Dedet Granel about his process.
We’re standing in the middle of his atelier on the outskirts of Paris and he’s showing me his latest creations in his trademark black and white for a solo show set to open in January next year at Galerie Brugier-Rigail in Paris.
Progressively lifting the pressure of his flat, wide and rigid calligraphy brushes – the first time he’s using such large ones, with some able to soak up to a liter of ink without dripping – as he meditatively crisscrossed his compositions on hanji (traditional Korean handmade mulberry paper), he painted them on the ground in black Rohrer & Klingner acrylic ink that doesn’t diffuse through the paper, although ultra liquid.
“It’s the perfect medium, between ink and acrylic, so I can really take my time,” he notes. But don’t expect to see any Chinese calligraphic characters here. L’Atlas has invented his own visual language, producing backgrounds of his own design before laying down strips of tape, spray painting over them in white acrylic using Montana Water Based cans that give a perfectly mat aspect and peeling off the tape to reveal his stylized signature based on vertical and horizontal lines beneath. Read More...
