Gustave Didelot
In oil painting, Gustave Didelot’s gesture remains inseparable from the creation of a territory, imagined in reality, lived in fiction. A territory in perpetual expansion, that of Painting. A "World of Painting", where you never rest.
The Artist’s painting is a representation of augmented life. Carried by a dialectical tension between contradictory signs: the bristles of the brushes abdicate their softness to ignite or flank themselves with axes; spectral shapes rub shoulders with lovers who embrace; sugar characters— gingerbread men and honey-man— slow down under their own inoffensiveness. But the telluric describes ambition: no territory without land, and to make it visible, we must push back the horizon lines to the top of the frame. (Ex) posing his canvases on the floor. painting sands moving, which the artist invites us to tread on to submerge in Painting.
The immersive universe is the avowed objective of Gustave Didelot. Himself a gamer, his painting seems to be a link between the surrealistic inspiration and the visual charter of the video game.
Fantasy, movement, violence are on the menu of the canvases. No more than emotions that they inspire. Neither the large format they inhabit. Neither the dynamism of the composition, or even all of these elements combined. There is, at the heart of the work, something that resists to interpretation, and it is precisely in this resistance that the World of Painting acquires its coherent character, overflowing the frame and imposing itself as a valid universe. Not just as fiction.
Rather as reality new, the very one that emerges from a dream or a nightmare and continues, sometimes for a long time, to act on us from within.
Three points and a bar. This arrangement is omnipresent, placed on everything that would like to be face. A face that is never one, not even a sketch. Rather an element of language, like a segment of the Morse alphabet, adorning everything that is intended to come to life in this World of Painting. They look like golems! Golems- cups, -grids -chairs -butterflies.
And painting golems too. Because the painting of Gustave Didelot represents itself, mise en abyme in a humorous dimension. Otherwise, what would be the meaning of these nails on the canvas slices? As a way to tame and fully appropriate this old art overwhelming that is painting.
Among the artists he studied to achieve this, Marnie Weber and Philip Guston marked him decisively. From the disturbing fantasy of the first, to the fleshy layout full of self- mockery of the second, Gustave Didelot took “what makes him feel good”.
This is perhaps what the artist postulates: a better world to which we must never stop to believe. Let's welcome it, let's celebrate it, at least for the time of a look.
Tina Allison Wetchy
Master of Visual Arts in Critical, Curatorial and Cybermedia Studies at HEAD – Geneva, Switzerland
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND RESIDENCIES
2022
●Bourse et résidence de Berlin
2021
●Candy chose, Flamme Atelier, Paris
●Exercice de Parade, exposition collective sur une invitation d’Adrian Fernandez Garcia, Halles EAC, Porrentruy.
2020
●Bourses de la Ville de Genève 2020, exposition collective,
Centre d’art contemporain de Genève.
2019
●Journal Hit 2019 & Group Show, exposition collective, Hit, Genève
●Formal mondial, exposition collective, Artemis Fontana, Paris
●Bourse Déliées, exposition collective, Halle Nord, Genève
●BLIND DATE #6, exposition, Sonnenstube, Lugano
● Bourses de la Ville de Genève 2019, exposition collective,
Centre d’art contemporain de Genève.
● If It Ever Happened It Could Be Very Like This, exposition personnel,
Bello319, Zurich
● Sans titre, entre autres, exposition collective, Le Commun, Genève
● Exposé sur le stand du FMAC dans les achats de l’année,
foire internationale d’Art Genève
2018
● Carnets, exposition collective, Halle du Nord, Genève
● No pain no game, exposition, espace cheminée Nord à Genève
2017
● Carnets, exposition collective, Halle du Nord, Genève
● Intervention public pour le Théâtre de Carouge, Genève
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
2021
●Banques 2020, livre d’artiste, micro-édition avec Halle Nord, Genève.
2019
● Plz hold my paint, livre d’artiste,
micro-édition aux Editions Ripopée, Nyon.
AWARDS
2020
● 2ème tours Bourses de la Ville de Genève -
Berthoud, Lissignol-Chevalier et Galland (BLCG) pour la jeune création
2019
● 2èmes tours Bourses de la Ville de Genève -
Berthoud, Lissignol-Chevalier et Galland (BLCG) pour la jeune création
● Bourse déliées du Fond Cantonal d’Art Contemporain de Genève
2018
● Prix Neumann de la Ville de Genève
COLLECTION:
2020
● Fonds Cantonal d’Art Contemporain de Genève
2019
● Fonds d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Genève
EDUCATION
2018-16
● Work Master à la HEAD de Genève
2016-14
● Bachelor en Art visuel à la HEAD de Genève
2014-11
● Bachelor en Communication visuel à la HEAD de Genève
2011-10
● Année de mise à niveau à l’Atelier de Sèvres de Paris