FRANÇOIS BOISROND

In 2006, Mudam invited François Boisrond (1959) to paint, on-the-spot, the process of setting up the museum’s inaugural exhibition Eldorado. Over the course of several months, the museum became his workshop as he worked on the premises on a daily basis. He became a familiar face to both the visitors and the team, blending into the decor and perfectly capturing its variations.

François Boisrond uses a camcorder in his pursuit of subjects. Video textures, pixellized light and automatic correction of colours are expected “secondary” numerical effects that are translated onto his canvasses. Indeed, the digital images serve not only as a sketch book, but also as a filter to think the painting, a bit like the camera lucida helped 17th century art, or how the daguerreotype helped impressionism.

Painting “contemporary art” is to make a sort of genre painting which somehow conjures up a certain historical tradition of artists who captured the public’s reaction in the Parisian salons of the time. A public that was caught in its petty games of men courting their neighbours, boisterous children being chased by their nanny in the painter Boilly’s work for example, or again, a sententious and scandalized public in Daumier’s paintings. Conscious of his romantic and vulnerable position, François Boisrond offers his own offbeat vision of the world of art in his own times.

Mudam Guesthouse 07
13/10/2007 - 26/11/2007
Eldorado
01/07/2006 - 20/11/2006

www.francoisboisrond.com