In the wake of the invisible
Antoine Dubruel was born in Bordeaux in 1977 in a family which had a strong inclination for Art and Culture. Antoine, following his father’s footsteps very early specialized in Law. However, disappointment came when he realized legal matters were not his calling, that’s why he decided after graduating in International Law to begin Art studies at the university. Very soon the fact of being brought face to face with the Dutch masters and the masterpieces of the Impressionist and the post-impressionist school gave birth to an obsession to paint.
He chose, quite naturally, oil painting and started a career where the compositions are the products of a slow intellectual and sensory gestation. He attended the Beaux Arts in Toulouse which gave him the opportunity to meet Jean Louis Ducros, a painter and an Emeritus Professor who taught him the history of oil painting and its traditional techniques and among them, the grinding of colours. He then started a Master in Modern Art, choosing a subject which was relevant to his own researches on the processing of fabrics in the Italian painting of the 15th and 16th centuries.
In order to finance his studies, Antoine worked for a year at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse which allowed him to spend a lot of time every day with, in particular, the painting works of the 20th century. As he was always keen to be in keeping with his choice, he started learning the trade of interior painter and decorator and took part in the rehabilitation of a block of flats dating back to 1913.
Biographical notes and personal exhibitions
As a student, I turned away from my career in Public International Law to pursue studies in Art History and drawing at the Beaux-Arts of Toulouse, closer to my aspirations. Confronted with the artistic inventions made over time by Van Gogh, Monet, or Derain, an obsession emerged: painting. My first works were born in 2004 in Toulouse in an « improvised » studio.
They are nourished by visual impressions, traces of travel, and the relationship I maintain with nature. Paying close attention to the works of old masters as well as the most recent evolutions in painting, I gradually developed a personal style with recurring, though always unique, motifs. These have become my signature in the contemporary art scene today.
I then focused on studying the works of Nicolas de Staël, Chaïm Soutine, or Georges Rouault. I also took an interest in Hiroshige and the Asian print around the landscape, in an approach oscillating between tradition—I grind colour pigments mixed with oils in the manner of the Old Masters—and innovation in the treatment of subjects. Indeed, if I exclusively choose oil, it is because I find in this material and its infinite possibilities the perfect medium to express the light that emerges from my compositions according to the seasons and each person’s states of mind. The compositions then become the fruit of a slow intellectual and sensory maturation process that takes several months.
Initially centred on the motif of the body, my work now leans towards what I call « mental landscapes. » « Tightrope walker » is how I feel at the time of creation, as if suspended in the air. The rope is thus stretched above a canvas I love to be vast, as it allows free movement, ensuring a « larger than-life » gesture to capture bold, vivid, and distinct colours.
So, Antoine Dubruel’s paintings, with compositions made of « dreamlike abstractions » lead us to the heart of ghostly transformed landscapes when freedom of gesture and powerful colours are combined in paintings which some people will describe as being midway between figurative painting and dreamed of landscapes. One thing is certain, light, material and balance, more often a loss of balance, are the keystones of his work.
My artistic approach
« Expressionist, » many would say.
I start with an initial work in drawing, using a mixed technique, followed by Chinese ink that spreads like the « negative » of the final canvas. The third phase of work brings out the ultimate composition, paying particular attention to the treatment of the so-called « natural » perspective, akin to the Italian « veduta » of Canaletto or Guardi. The creative thread then combines the line and the colour, the shape of the detail and the colourful and highly material final painting.
Hence, I enjoy creating within the heart of transfigured ghostly landscapes, where the freedom of gesture and the strength of colour blend. Some might call these compositions « dreamlike abstraction, » halfway between figuration and dreamed landscapes. One thing is certain: light, matter, and balance, often in imbalance, are the keystones.
For eight years, I chose to work in the south of France, specifically in Sète, the singular island, touched by this city’s brutal and poignant force, a place of both no return and all possibilities. The presence of water in my paintings testifies to this. From my atelier perched between the Thau lagoon and the sea, I continued my work further inland, then establishing my studio in Lozère, in the Gorges du Tarn, on a rocky promontory near the ruins of a medieval castle, hanging between cliffs and vultures, before traveling once again to the Aveyron Cevennes, at the foot of Mont Aigoual. This place, very lush, « oxygenates » and « greens » my paintings a little more each day. Nature is thus omnipresent in my paintings.
Thus, painting remains and stands as this « radical » and sinuous choice imposed on me as a necessity. The only path in my eyes where hand and mind can express themselves in total freedom.
What does being a painter mean to me today?
It means taking a« radical » approach, in the original sense of the word, and, daily, making real sacrifices.
It means following an ancestral tradition, in the footsteps of brilliant painters whom I admire and who have left their mark on the history of painting, applying the precepts and «recipes» of the Ancients, while always having the «essential» concern to innovate.
It means expressing my innermost being in a way that may be intimate but is above all universal and human.
It means never giving up when, in my act of creation, I launch myself into this «bullfight struggle» (the image is worn but very real) of hand-to-hand combat with the canvas. It means crossing it, becoming one with it, forgetting myself, disappearing, to be reborn each time a little more to myself.
It means to experience, in a very «sensual» relationship in the original sense of the word, the pleasure of materials:I love the ink laid down in a breath on the paper, the sound of pigments crushed with a pestle on the marble, the smell of the oils I mix in, and then above all to see the different colours come to life, making me feel like an alchemist at the time.
It means to be in this perpetual attitude of searching for nuances, reformulating mathematical rules, wanting to create other «dispositions» of the world (mine) on canvas.
It means to attempt to escape the ever-growing topicality that scratches and abrades me, so that in my painting I can tend towards a slower, indelible (or almost indelible) and timeless approach.
It means being present in the contemporary world to which I belong – the world of contingencies, of its frenzy, of its art market, of its rules – while at the same time trying to extract myself from it, at least for as long as the act of creation lasts.
It means to try to forget human beings and their excessesto conjure up Mother Nature and her balancewhich is being increasingly abused.
It also means, at times, being tempted by a form of self-sufficiency, of withdrawal in the face of a world that seems to me, in certain respects, strange(r).
It means accepting that I don’t have a «job» like everyone else, that I haven’t chosen a simple path, already mapped out in and by the family bosom, and it means that I’m committed every day to a job that’s exhausting but fascinating because it’s both repetitive and always different.
It means that it is an attempt to escape the weight of words, to leave behind the verbal, semantic and sometimes over-conceptual approach to art as well as to find another language that manages without them. Yes, an attempt to try to find another language that speaks to everyone.
It meanstryingperhaps unconsciously to exorcise or at least tame death by leaving, in my own way, a trace.
It means, in the end, remaining free to do what I love: paint.
Exhibitions
I favour unique places such as castles, contemporary art centers or museums among others.
In August 2008, I organized my first exhibition in Gordes, in the Lubéron before exhibiting my paintings in Marseille, then in Paris in September 2012 at the Monod Gallery and lately in 2014 in Rodez (north of Aveyron) at the Artives Gallery, close to the Soulages Museum and near big names like Pierre Soulages himself (lithographies), Hans Hartung or Zao Wou Ki.
In autumn 2014, I showed my work in several galleries : A Cappell’Art, Salon des Arts, Passage à l’Art in Millau (Aveyron). Then, in Lodève (Hérault), at the gallery O Marches du Palais, a former chapel of the White Penitents, which had been turned into a wide, light-flooded Gallery. In May 2016, it was in the Salle Costantini (Millau) and in early summer 2016 on the Mont Saint-Clair in Sète, in front of the sea. In May 2017, my paintings were exhibited in the medieval village of Conques (Northern Aveyron) in the European Art Centre, then in September 2019, in a public space : the Espace culture in Millau.
Several other projects followed : an exhibition in the Chapelle des Dominicains in Carcassonne (Aude) in May 2021, then, one in the House of the famous writer Etienne de la Boétie in Sarlat (Dordogne). It was followed by an exhibition in Gordes (Provence) in 2022. I must also mention exhibitions in the Abbey of St Hilaire (Aude), in the medieval village of Mirepoix (Ariège), another called « Autochtonies »in the museum of Millau and finally in the Orangery of the Sambucy Castle (Aveyron) for the European Heritage Days in late 2024. I want also to add a sound performance about one of my inks in a theatre.
Citations
What strikes me the most is that you stage a nature that is particularly alive, primeval, as if your vision retrieved the memory of a primarygeological time. But, perhaps, a sign of the time, the viewer may have the feeling that these recollections could well be the harbinger of a gloomy future.
If your landscapes are not « lively » according to the usual meaning of the word in painting (the human being seems to be pushed away, in the margins). They appear as if they were inhabited by one does not know what kind of (evil?) forces, one does not know what kind of threats are silently scheduled. The sharp shapes prevail and a sort of tectonics of coloured beaches seem to work in order to blow up the surface of your canvases.
The painter tries hard to reveal another more profound dimension which runs deep behind the figurative appearance of his work and which is present even if it is difficult to figure out. Whether his achievement is suggested by the title or by means which are purely plastic, or else by the conjunction of these two factors, he inhabits each of the paintings which are exhibited.
Gerard Vergnes
Brutality and tenderness of the drawing, yearning for boundless horizons, tragic humanity. Lines everywhere, looking like scratches which are slashing a canvas and yet, often, what a lightness, like somepetrification whose effects are mirrored in glasswork, but, at the same time, these effects would render all failure to act impossible.
[…]Down below, some claws are battling in hordes, fantastic figures, shapes and colours which often choose to avoid one another; they are slipping in between, heading for what is possible in the instant, they are sometimes spreading, but nothing is certain since everything is on the move like parts of lithospheric plates: overlapping, gliding, climbing, rustling […]sudden thrust of the black colour which makes what was already in ruins, topple and collapse. Is it the sound of trampling of what is already dead? What’s the use? but isn’t it the situation we are living through today : this feeling of never being able to destroy, to erode the same real, thought over, imagined territories in order to attempt to give birth to something else ?
Gilles Desnots, playwright
[…] a symbolic expression, a bit esoteric, an echo of Antoine Dubruel’s « romantic » expressionism
Christophe Liron, visual artist, gallery owner
English version – translated by Pierre Costecalde