Jaques Villeglé- Patrick Derom Gallery Brussels

Description

Jaques Villeglé- Patrick Derom Gallery Brussels
Paperback
Published: 2018
Pages: 96
Language: French, English
Dimensions: 28 x 22 x 0,7 cm. / 11 x 8.7 x 0.3 inch.

Jacques Villeglé collected his first torn poster on the Boulevard du Montparnasse in 1949. Almost 60 years later, at the age of 92, he is sitting here on a bench at the press opening of the exhibition that the Patrick Derom Gallery has dedicated to him. He tells journalists again and again why he stopped painting at the age of 17 to use only the poster in public space, to use a work that is now mythical.

On the walls of gallery Derom, another museum-quality exhibition. We see the career of Jacques Villeglé (1926), from his first torn posters – he does not like to be called torn apart – to his practice today of typographic drawing, through some forty works. There is also a film directed by the artist, Un mythe dans la ville (1974-1998) and the documentary Jacques Villeglé directed by Fabrice Maze for the artist’s retrospective in 2008 at the Centre Pompidou. As well as some black and white photos of the artist leaning against a wall, to tear off a thick layer of posters. “He never ‘watched’ them during his picking; He was in too much of a hurry for that. Rather, it is the cabinets that met him by metamorphosing into images, spectacles, paintings of chance. Everything went so fast when he, “leaving it to delight him”, tore up the posters of their support, that he was often unable to know if the net of the day would satisfy him. Often he only really discovered his loot when he got home, by using the posters in his studio,” writes Catherine Francblin in the catalogue.

What an honor and what a joy to meet this little gentleman! Since 1957, his work has been the subject of nearly 250 solo exhibitions and has been exhibited in numerous collective events around the world. “I wanted to condemn the myth of individual creation,” he explains. The rupture is a physical gesture. The tear is more mental. To tear, you need to make big gestures. I have always used the found posters as they are. I was just selecting a framing. If a word was too visible, I deleted a little bit so that it insinuates things, that it can be guessed. Art is a mystery. It’s the mysterious side of the Mona Lisa’s smile that’s interesting,” he tells us.

Of course, the poster is inspired by art. Villeglé’s power is to bring the advertising universe back into the field of art. “A painting, to tell the truth, of a bad kind, “that drags the sand of the boulevards, a whole atmosphere of circus games and lotteries behind it.” (…) When he met an artist who asked him if he worked, he replied: “No, I pick up posters on the street,” Francblin continues in the catalogue. Advertising art is direct, it shows the desires of an era. I take that aspect away. In addition, I understood that chance is important in art,” says Villeglé. “Looking is searching and guessing.”

Many large formats, several very small pieces, always with torn paper, in multiple layers, solid shells, of shapes, pieces of letters, fragments of images, the rhythm of which becomes pictorial and abstract. A great joy. For twenty years Villeglé has been drawing texts, rebus or graffiti composed of a made-up alphabet, each letter of which is a symbol from collective and historical iconography or his own imagination. What a surprise we find the artist’s taste for composition from existing elements. Under no circumstances to be missed!- Muriel De Crayencour
mu-inthecity.com