Lease artwork "La Cruche Aux 2 Tomates" by Frank Chevallier with an option to purchase

Frank Chevallier born in 1968 in Besançon, has always evolved through contact with graphic design. From a very young age he colored the urban landscapes that his grandmother sketched. From this daily occupation of his youth, he turned it into his profession as an architectural designer working for major French brands. It is in this universe that he assimilates the lifestyles of his peers, their habits, their qualities and what defects he detects there.
The young man quickly realizes that the world offered to us is very different from the environment he knew in his younger years. He expressed his first regrets through a series of paintings on the theme of American Indians living in the last century entitled: “On the trail of humans”. This first artistic approach, exhibited exclusively in the east of France around twenty years ago, confronted the way of life of these “men with pure hearts” with our modern society based on economics and expansionism. This collection was voluntarily stopped by the artist when the path it took became contrary to the message that the painter wanted to convey: Harmony, between the lives of men and respect for their environment.
This first experience nevertheless allowed him to acquire a pictorial technique where his canvases radiated under a light that the artist tamed in an almost natural way through increasingly intense and modern colors, while maintaining a classic figurative representation.
The work that this faithful autodidact offers us today remains in the logic of his initial approach. The bodies of the first men are replaced by objects of life staged as in what the artistic genre calls “still life”. An obvious logic born from the observation of our society. However, nature is far from being dead, so much so that the neophyte ignores what the simplistic image of the painting reflects to us. The “still life” is then expressed like a portrait filled with life through the color touched by the light which gives it body and volume. The object takes on a symbolic identity dimension where everyone can find themselves or recognize their neighbor. The rigorous composition, forming a set of several identities, similar to our society, sends us back to our past, and confronts us with our future, us public suspended in present time, like an entity with virtual individuals who wonder. Who are we ? Where do we come from ? Where are we going ? Isn’t that one of our main concerns today?
Beyond the aesthetics of the icon, the colors placed side by side complement each other, dialogue and vibrate with each other, inviting the viewer to self-reflection, criticism, and openness towards others. From this dimension, accentuated by the voluntary absence of frame, emerges a great freedom of pictorial expression where the key words: Identity, Exchange, Freedom and Sharing remain present. Perhaps we will find some answers there…

Yves BONGAY - the Republican East

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1968
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists