Olivier Catté

Olivier Catté

Born 26/09/1957 in Petit-Quevilly,76 France.

Education:
1977/1978 : École des Beaux-Arts de Pau
1979/1980/1981 : Institut d ‘Arts Visuels d’Orléans
Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique, département Arts, option peinture en 1981
Exhibits in France and abroad since 1981.

Recent solo shows:
2011 : Galerie Alexandre Lazarew, ParisGalerie Acabas, Paris
2010 : Galerie Mam, Rouen
Galeria El Greco, Veracruz, Mexique
2009 : Galerie Universitaire Ramon Alva del Canal, Xalapa, Mexique
2007 : L’Etoile, Paris
1998/2003 : Galerie Salon de Thorigny, Paris

Recent group exhibitions:
2010 : Salon Art Paris, Paris
Galerie Art City, Paris
2009 : Galerie Matignon Léadouze, Paris
Galerie 13avril, Biarritz
2008 : Galerie W, Paris
Galerie Artemptation, Bruxelles
2005/2007 : Galerie W, Paris
2003 : Agora Gallery, New York City (Lauréat SoHo Int. Art Competition)

My work is marked by a progressive and logic updating that requires a single necessity: Painting.

I need to think by painting, paint in order to free myself from all those feelings which lead me to paint. I know that painting is my duty and i’m try to practice it out of bounds by avoiding formulas.

Spending hours to paint is at the end, spending hours to think: Painting is a spilled thinking.

For a long time, ( when i was just a kid, i’ve been fascinated by what i was seeing in the museums, and i felt like paintings were talking to me, as teenager, i took drawing classes at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts at Pau). I do talk to paintings,followed conversation on a very important topic that takes and requires time.

To paint, means to name, and unname, to dédicate the whole board to painting.

Patience,perseverance and persistence, are the main conditions to achieve a project that i defined in 1981 and had the approval of Claude Viallat for my graduation diploma: ” Only painting on boards”

In 2008, i aproached a new set of packaging box, same places, always different: few colors, usually black glazes, sometimes red or white, cut or ripped support, reveales a surprising frame and shows a new street vision.

An economy of devices is claimed because it will allow us to get to the point by avoiding waste.

When looking at my paintings on carton, we realize that abstract or figurative is old fashioned.

All the elements are under pressure, and are events creating a pictorial space.

Whatever if these events belong to vision or not, they integrat the same space opened to deepness.

The reference in New York for exemple is a moment, colour stains of another moment, the concurrency of these two moments represent the reality of the artwork and artwork exists as rythms – ryhtmic moments as well as figurative ones are exchanging, architectural and runny moment of a movement, in a disontinuity which is the mark of living, the reflection of what i’m living when i’m painting.

To choose the packing box as a support means revealing the hidden, the junk, the waste, and ironize the legitimacy of this hierarchy.

In New York, like in Paris, i’ve seen homelesses fighting about a packing box to shelter.

In New York, Paris, Hong Kong, in all the big cities, we can find these same packing boxes, it reflects globalization, packed goods, remains of consumer.

I didn’t try to sweeten theses boxes by hiding their folds or their writings,I kept it as real as it is.

I’m covering it up with black glaze- black is an abstraction: There is no black, there is materials, various black pigments, applied in trails, in stains, vertically or horizontally,each box is different from the other.

I value this making before lacing it, ripping off layers, and playing with hidden, wavy trames.

At this point, art comes from paper box.

When i start a paper box, i travel in an unexpected adventure,i lead as i can, taking advantage from any luck. Yet, there’s no luck, just a particular hazard coming from the nature of the layers that makes up the carton.

Just like the purpose of art which is the way of expression of the underlying layers, levels of deepness…

At the beginning of 2011, I went twice to Morocco ( Marrakech and then Ouarzazate), I knew that the berber architecture of the Kasbahs will renew my work, I wasn’t disappointed.

” In the excessiveness and the tension, dark blocks, confront the lights.Olivier Catté’s art begins from a first and chaotic enigma, can the univers turn on a unique city, unthinkable, terrible and sublime? ”

Christian Noorbergen