François Crinel

The atmosphere of the first engravings of François Crinel is the fantasy novel. N'at'il not engraved "Raven" "after a poem by the master of the genre, Edgar Allan Poe? In these prints, a piece of history in the colours of the expectation of premonition has been proposed. On the deck of a cruise ship desert that the rail and the stairs iron line all the bars, what does this woman naked body milky in the form of siren? This sharp beaks to crow does flow by opening too narrow which is already the shadow of his wing? What vertigo, which capsized show us as a grid which projects the shadow of a cross, in another engraving, the slats of the floor lit by the door?
This vision of a world where there is a sullen and empty horizon beyond the rail, where the window is narrow, or even barred backdoor reflected only when the reports, far from being a pessimistic shines Poetry less oriented to the effect that the exploration of interiority. These moods are rendered with simple elements taken into reality: it is their staging, which diverts the use and initiated the enigma. Indeed, François has an eye Crinel exercised by photography and film, what you see much in the plans he chooses. The rows of benches on the deck seem to be open and oriented as in a "wide-angle" around the naked woman who is in the lower right corner of the composition. The slight counter-diving chosen to be the head crow stretches up to develop anthropomorphic aspects. The contradiction between the lines of the carpet, prosecutors, the effect of linear perspective and accentuated the occultation voluntary high, in other words the door which gives meaning to the composition, increasing the uncertainty of the viewer and dizzy by all. Where some see a large atrium, a volume in height or elevator shaft with his sons, should we not think of a memory of raboteurs "parquet" Caillebotte.
Today, François Crinel juxtapose one draw in a scene figurative and abstract work of a pure gestural expansion, thus creating the conditions for tension vitalise the two sections of the final engraving.
Since then, the writer has worked on the windows. His etchings have made greater emphasis on the colour. He likes to play on the occultation and partial transparency effects caused by metal shutters lamella. Sign of reality enshrined in the seventies who camped alone atmosphere.
With the same precision that characterized his first job, he carved the horizontal stripes that close the top of the window. The high only because the track ends soon and its slats become disrupted bird feathers fanned out over an area colored driven by a caressing breeze orange. The horizontal stripes can be found on the top of some naked engraved with the same period. Printing trouble caused by these distorted images occurred when the artist against a white image, a clear and naked as veined by a maze lace his double reverse, dark and torn. The duality and diffraction body attest to the inability to grasp the very image of the other.
As a result of the search for inner came nodes which François Crinel works. No longer the window, or even the cord hanging from the curtain rod - which is the origin of the subject-but the knot, the interlacing of a single rope pervasive throughout the visual field. The journey is the theme of being traced: in an engraving, round cord curtain to remind the woman whose body is reflected in the mirror. Thus the line to the feminine aspects: it is striped like the top of the body burned. The passage of the ship in the rope and knotted the bird, wings and legs bent at the node which sometimes deploys plumage was done in a kind of unconscious slip where erotic element is important. The rope marks torso splitting and the embrace. The knot - is its function - binding and united what is loose He stretch forked tree or female. He masse as to break the window behind: It seems that the artist collects and gathers in this tight, which in turn becomes a question mark blue or brown shell or arabesque, Venetian masks or snake.
In some etchings in a series of nodes - to them - my preference is accurate and the graphics rendering volumetric give way to simple silhouettes. The circumvolutions node which referred to earlier folds of a brain or a hand to simplify into a maelstrom which replaces the image its realistic metaphor dynamic? François Crinel was his way of cutting the Gordian knot: in the sense of length, to remove the sign formal. Yet these nodes formalized, returned to their simple dynamic tension that seem popular in Chinese shadow, retain something of their original relief. These dazibaos background or red or keep the thickness of the link printed in their meanderings.
At any eye, his settling of reality. For François Crinel, the node is both the great enigma of the novel - which he took some time ago accents - that the evidence of his work as a writer, followed wire to wire in the metamorphosis for our elevation, plus daily .

Thierry Dufrêne
April 25… ..