Sébastien Capouet

The realization of these paintings does not come from a research on a particular subject, what is the usually method for a documentary, or a specific story. They are born from the memory of a place and the sensory and imaginary experience with that: the physical confrontation with a landscape, the symbiosis that results from and the intangible traces that nestle in the memory. Then the artist emulates a reconstruction of these traces through different stages; the journey, the creation of a fictional person, the photographic recordings, the ranking, the development of a database of images and patterns, the virtual construction of the canvas and finally its realization. 

Both in the photos as in the paintings the digital aspect is always present in the workflow of Sébastien Capouet. He uses the possibilities of multiplication and malleability of the technology to access a deep buried memory and imaginary world.

It is out of this uncertain memory of the material existence of a place that the matrix of a fiction arises: the integration of a character in a landscape and the foundation of a picturesque operative part. The character is born as the composition of a costume, made of discarded elements during the trip. It is about the character, formed by materials and textures of various kinds, generating in a hybrid character. 

Sometimes this results in a dissimilar composition, which even may have an absurd and dreamy aspect. The characters, which only exist in the photographic space, are presented as stagnant and jammed bodies, always in the extension of their environment.

There are many recordings of the character made in quick succession, from different angles, which generates a large amount of images. Some are carefully selected and printed. The use of black and white has the qualification to function as a steamroller that reinforced the flatness of the picture and so emphasizes the anchoring and the integration of the character in the landscape. So the distinction between the faces slowly blurs. The large size also contributes to another relationship to reality. 

The photographed object stretches and spreads out on a tangible surface resembling a painted space, which can result in an abstract. The sharpness of the images, their picturesque, and the particular picture control causes a loss of physical and temporary landmarks in which the animal, vegetable, mineral, the greatness of the landscape and the minimal details of the rock flowing into each other. It is a work on the surface, which reflects a transformed vision.

A wider selection of images is brought together in a book-object. The origin of this lays in the intention to share an imaginary basis and permits a quasi-unlimited game of associations and formal and visual combinations. This results in a multiplication of analog connections as a game of encounters between things of various origins, which combine or merge with each other where they are defined. 

The realization emphasizes a fictional process of temporality, whose duration is as long as an invented time, conceived on the basis of mixed events and moments. The principle of grouping of successive folds allows a wide variety of formulations and invites the reader-viewer to create his own fiction.

The set of photographic images calls decipherment and a work of sedimentation on. For the artist, it is about ingesting the flow of images and incorporating into a process of decomposition. In other words, it is about understanding different monitoring methods and the ways in which each image appears, and then to contain the forms of action, which are projected. For many years the artist has composited a true inventory of pictorial signs: motives, silhouettes from photographic images, stains, profiles of objects, comments, monotypes ... of which each are photographed and stored in the computer. A virtual database as a ' prosthetic memory ' that allows him to work on the basis of accumulation and assembly.

The paintings have a seemingly spontaneously appearance, but in reality are wisely prepared and built up. Before he starts with a painting, Sébastien Capouet sets up a kind of virtual ' scratch ' by using a computer program. This study consists of several layers, each of which corresponds to an action plan from the inventory. It is a process of creating a predetermined protocol for implementation. The artist needs to succeed in visualizing and portraying the different gestures and actions that he will have to repeat during the manufacture of the painting, before he begins.