Particules élémentaires I (série) (2023) Printmaking by Richard Grateloup

Édition numérique réalisée d'après une création originale issue d'une mini série de trois peintures à l'huile et glycéro.
Un intérêt particulier a été porté aux contrastes des matières (opaque/transparente, lisse/rugueuse, matte/brillante etc.) et à la lumière par le jeu d'un contraste évoquant le clair-obscur.
La peinture opère par couches, par glissements, par ajouts et retraits successifs. Chaque trace laissée, chaque geste déposé, s’inscrit dans une temporalité fragmentaire, comme une mémoire du faire. Ce n’est pas tant le geste qu’on y cherche, mais le moment où il échappe, où il reste — une résurgence. L’accumulation formelle répond ainsi à une logique de stratification, comme une métaphore des strates de savoir, de mémoire, ou d’expérience. Les signes blancs, dans leur organisation quasi scripturale, ne disent rien de lisible, mais évoquent, par leur rythme, une forme d’écriture silencieuse. Ce sont des empreintes de pensée à l’état brut.
La référence aux écritures blanches de Cy Twombly apparait en affinité : une manière de penser le geste pictural comme murmure comme trace. Ici, la peinture est, en soi, pensée matérialisée.
L’ensemble fonctionne comme un triptyque informel, une partition ouverte. Il n’y a pas de narration. Chaque tableau se tient pour lui-même tout en convoquant les autres. Les particules sont peut-être ces fragments de pensée, ces unités minimales de savoir qui, mises ensemble, produisent une forme sans nom, mais non sans sens.
Impression sur Canson® Infinity Edition Etching Rag 310g.
Motif 23cm, marges 3,5cm.

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Digital edition created from an original work belonging to a mini-series of three oil and alkyd (glycero) paintings.

A particular attention was given to the interplay of material contrasts — opaque/transparent, smooth/rough, matte/glossy, and others — as well as to the use of light, notably through a chiaroscuro-like tension. This attention to contrasts operates not only on a visual level but also as a structural principle, guiding the viewer’s perception across the surface.

The painting proceeds through successive layers, gliding motions, additions and subtractions. Each mark, each gesture laid down, inscribes itself within a fragmented temporality — like a memory of the act of making. What is sought here is not so much the gesture itself, but the moment when it slips away, when it remains — a kind of resurgence. In this way, the accumulation of forms responds to a logic of stratification, evoking a metaphor of layered knowledge, memory, or experience.

The white signs — organized in a near-scriptural manner — do not convey anything legible in the conventional sense. Yet they evoke, through their rhythm and placement, a form of silent writing. These are imprints of thought in its raw state, not yet domesticated into meaning. The reference to Cy Twombly’s "white writings" emerges here as a point of affinity: a way of conceiving the pictorial gesture as whisper, as trace. Here, painting is not representation, but materialized thought.

The whole functions as an informal triptych — an open partition. There is no narrative structure. Each painting stands on its own, while simultaneously invoking the others. The "particles" might be understood as fragments of thought, minimal units of knowledge which, when assembled, produce a form that has no name, yet is not without meaning.

The silent dialogue between these units creates a space of tension and resonance, where matter and void, presence and absence, weight and suspension interact. The viewer is invited not to decode, but to dwell, to hover in that threshold zone where form emerges and withdraws.

In its digital translation, the image retains these ambiguities — this interplay between assertion and erasure, trace and disappearance. Far from attempting to "fix" the painting, the digital edition prolongs its logic: that of a potential image, never entirely stabilized, never closed.

This edition is printed on Canson® Infinity Edition Etching Rag 310gsm, a heavyweight, 100% cotton fine art paper known for its deep blacks, soft texture, and archival quality — chosen for its ability to honor the original’s material sensitivity.

Image size: 23 cm motif
Margins: 3.5 cm on all sides