Nicolas Vionnet’s original medium is acrylic on canvas.
His chiefly large-scale works play with space and expanse.
Although almost always realistic, his paintings have more in common with abstract images than real landscapes. He paints disruptive grey strips across his clouds and allows colored surfaces to drip down the canvas in accordance with the laws of gravity. He is fascinated by such irritations: interventions that approach and create a non-hierarchical dialogue with the environment.
This dialogue opens up a field of tension, which allows the viewer an intensive glimpse of both these phenomena.
Vionnet uses the same approach and the same strategy for his installations and objects. Irritation and integration.
A fundamental confrontation with the history of a place leads to a subtler and more precise intervention of the object. Take for example his manmade grass island at the Weimarhallen Park (Weimar, GER), which ironically intensified the park’s own artificiality.
In ‘Close the Gap’ (Leipzig, GER) he bridged the space between an old row of townhouses with a printed canvas image of the now much frowned upon prefabricated building. A reference to changes in time and aesthetics.
