LAURENT DELECROIX

“Laurent Delecroix’s approach reveals a unique awareness of the history of abstraction. The Ikea kitchen unit combined with the painting could easily be linked to a history that encompasses 1920s Russian Constructivism – with painting transcending into the functional object – and Donald Judd’s volumes of the 1960s. The neutrality of the gesture might recall the works of Buren, Mosset, Parmentier and Toroni from 1967. Laurent Delecroix’s works evoke these references without being reduced to them or indulging in a game of quotations, as they differ from them each time. They confront this reduction of painting at work in the various abstract avant-gardes (flat surface, primary colours, forms derived from the format...) with the objects that surround us. The modernist critique of the painting meets the standardisation of objects, which are, in the case of the Ikea kitchen, themselves offshoots of modernist design. The reduction of painting to itself leads to its exterior, to the banality of everyday forms, from the pure to the impure.” – excerpt from Effets de seuil, Romain Mathieu, art historian and art critic

​

‘Whilst Laurent Delecroix’s work cannot be reduced solely to his use of red paint—which, when mixed, shifts decisively towards what might be considered pink—one cannot ignore what the artist himself states: this shade is his chosen colour, the one that undoubtedly resonates most strongly with the music played by his body of work as a whole. The artist’s Assemblages do indeed appear as a sort of orchestra in which each canvas plays its part. The vibration of the soft, pastel-coloured paint lends the installation an undeniable sense of fragility and grace. In this vein, it is tempting to draw parallels with the work of John McCracken, a Californian artist classified as a minimalist but often contrasted with his minimalist compatriots on the US East Coast.

​

‘His hybrid works, halfway between painting, relief and sculpture, offer, at first glance, little to captivate the viewer. They adhere to a strict and limited visual vocabulary, yet they are executed with such care that they appear as a concentrated essence of pure colour.’ Excerpt from La Vie en rose, Fabienne Grasser-Fulchéri, director of the Espace de l’art concret.

​Image below: 2 Sigma V2, 2024. Diptych. Acrylic on canvas. 220 x 136 cm