NEW YORK, NY.- TEMPLON welcomed abstract painter Claude Viallat in its New York space for the first time. A legendary figure of the last French avant-garde movement, Supports/Surfaces, Claude Viallat, now 88, is taking over the Chelsea gallery with an installation of large-scale colorful tarpaulins, created between the 1970s and today.
Based in Nîmes in the south of France, Claude Viallat developed an artistic protocol over 60 years ago he has stayed faithful to ever since. Rejecting the notions of “picture”, “figuration” and “narration”, he has been repeating the same geometric form, suggesting a cell or small bone, on found fabrics with no stretchers and no frames. A pioneering figure in the Supports/Surfaces movement and its quest to overthrow the codes of painting, Claude Viallat has today established himself as one of the most radical painters of his generation.
The Templon exhibition offers a retrospective look at his practice. From the raw tarpaulins of the late 1960s to largescale compositions on printed fabric and the glued and patched canvases he has produced in recent years, the works illustrate the unprecedented creativity of an artist who has never renounced the agenda he set himself at the start of his career. A great admirer of Matisse, his art borrows from sources as varied as rock art, Native American culture and bullfighting. His work reveals a particular interest in the US art scene, as demonstrated by the discreet drips that crop up here and there on his military tarpaulins, scarves and luxury fabric offcuts, a nod to legendary abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. His exploration of volume and space results in the resolute questioning of the status of the work of art and very purpose of its exhibition.
Claude Viallat was born in 1936 in Nîmes, France, where he continues to live and work. The creation of the Supports/Surfaces movement saw him quickly gain international recognition, and his work was included in solo exhibitions in Buenos Aires, Casablanca, Miami, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Milan, Ankara and Montreal. It currently features in leading public collections such as at MoMA, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Musée National d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou and National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan. He represented France at the 43rd Venice Biennale in Italy in 1988. The many solo exhibitions of his work include shows at the Carré d’Art in Nîmes (2023), Venet Foundation in southeastern France (2019), Musée Fabre in Montpellier (2014), Ludwig Museum in Germany (2014), Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico (2004), MuBe in Brazil (2001), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Germany (1983) and Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou in Paris (1982).
The artist has been represented by Galerie Templon for over twenty years.
