GRISOR
Born in Tourcoing (France) in 1947.
Lives and works in Lille.
Over the last fifty years, Dominic Grisor has developed a singular body of work that has never ceased to renew itself, with a constant concern for rigour and balance. While the metal cuts and reliefs express the quintessence of his work, characterised by formal associations that are as meaningful as they are improbable, it is worth noting that a common logic underpins all these works, which is none other than a concern for accuracy. Moving from a disturbing hyper-realism to total abstraction over the course of his series, Grisor offers us an eclectic, fair and generous body of work.
What is above is like what is below
How and why would you want to balance a painted stone on the edge of a metal blade? It seems to me that this display represents the very essence of Dominic Grisor's work. Everything in his work is a search for balance. Here in an arrangement as unstable as it is improbable; elsewhere between line and surface, relief and plane or figuration and abstraction.
How to hold things together? Haven't I often heard the artist say, when considering one or other of his works: "It holds! It's a fairly common expression among visual artists, but one that takes on a very special meaning for him. Because that's what it's all about: holding things together. Shapes and colours in space first of all, in a sort of clever and magnificent interplay. Or signs and things in the search for subtle symbolic correspondences.
And why do we want to "hold things together"? Because it seems to me that in Dominic Grisor's work there is a stubborn search for relationships and combinations that might reveal something of the world's profound structure. In this way, for him, 'to make fit' would mean tuning into a mysterious order of the universe from which he would get the secret of exercising from a vision. Finally, wanting to "hold things together" because, beyond his images alone, it would also mean maintaining a certain order of things, preventing the world from falling apart.
Dominique Tourte
Re-combining everyday life
It is fairly commonplace to consider that, since individualism has become the central value of modern consciousness, art can only be a singular practice - in a privileged relationship with the singularity of its author alone. There is therefore a constant risk that it will develop without any communication with the social body or, more modestly, with others. For the artist, there is a risk of absolute solipsism or strictly tautological satisfaction, which can only be confirmed in the course of the spread of modernity and the extinction of the collective discourses that accompany it: I make art that is art about art. The affirmation of the autonomy of art has as its flip side the solitude of the artist; the more absolute value he gives to his practice, the more he risks having to repeat with Flaubert: "I would throw myself into the water to save a beautiful verse or a beautiful sentence, from anyone. But I cannot believe that humanity needs me any more than I need it.
The question that an artist, whether modern or 'postmodern' - and even if they don't ask themselves this question in all lucidity, the important thing is that their work in some sense answers the question for them - has to resolve is how to find common ground on which to build a communication with others, to escape from solipsism and tautology, at a time when the great ideals of the past (religion, service to the State) and unquestionable shared values have all collapsed.
The solution developed by Grisor in the decade in question, which would later give rise to significant variants along the way, was to use (to build on) images that were accessible to everyone, that everyone could recognise (if not name) at least in part. Not in order to reproduce them by simplifying them (as American pop art did - but Grisor began to intervene at a time when pop had already passed, in the process of becoming part of the history of modern art, which he was perhaps bringing to a close), but in order to retain only fragments of them, which he rearranged in his own way.
As a result, his proposals are both seductive (everyone can find in them elements that are 'known' or already experienced) and disconcerting (these same elements do seem to produce meaning - like sentences, if we accept that the repetition of objects and pieces of 'nature' constitutes a kind of vocabulary - which remains perfectly enigmatic). In other words, it is also because of the metonymic significance of each element that its coexistence with the others is implicitly problematic: if a cactus refers to the possibility of a desert while a Venetian blind refers to the city, how can we resolve the contradiction suggested by their juxtaposition on a canvas? It is in the articulations between these elements, in the addition of their partial meanings and in the 'montage' that makes them coexist, much more than in their description - even though it is as detailed as possible - that the singular consciousness of the individual Grisor asserts itself. It is here that the way in which he distinguishes himself from the other consciousnesses of the moment is marked, but this singularity is all the more accepted (it is all the less likely to be sent back to solipsism) because it circulates, as it were, in secret, behind the objects of the world that the viewer may have known.
Gérard Durozoi
CV
Né à Tourcoing en 1947.
Vit et travaille à Lille.
EXPOSITIONS PERSONNELLES (sélection) / SOLO SHOWS (selection)
2022
Galerie Cédric Bacqueville, Lille, France
2019
Galerie Cédric Bacqueville, Lille, France
2017
Galerie Cédric Bacqueville, Lille, France
2016
Galerie Cédric Bacqueville, Lille, France
2015
Galerie Bacqueville, Lille, France
2014
4 à 4, Musée Paul Valéry, Sète, France
2013
Lille Art Fair, Galerie A. Delerive, France
2010
Galerie A. Delerive, Lille, France
2008
Galerie Régis Dorval, Lille, France
2006
École Régionale Supérieure d'Expression Plastique, Tourcoing, France
2005
Dodeigne-Grisor, Foire Européenne Strasbourg, France
Galerie Régis Dorval, Lille, France
2003
Piet Blanckaert Gallery, Bruges, Belgium
J&M Davidson Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Telindus-Ostende, Belgium
2002
Médiathèque Marguerite Yourcenar, Faches-Thumesnil, France
Galerie A. Delerive, Lille, France
2000
Galerie de l'Atelier 2, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France
1996
Opsis Art Gallery, Ostduinkerke, Belgium
Médiathèque de Trith-Saint-Léger, France
1994
Espace Techno, Paris, France
1993
S.A.G.A Grand Palais, éditions Images du temps, Paris, France
École Supérieure d'Arts Plastiques, Valenciennes, France
1992
Espace Techno, Paris, France
Espace Le Carré, Lille, France
Galerie Étienne de Causans, Paris, France
1990
Galerie Jacqueline Moussion, Paris, France
1989
Galerie Jacqueline Moussion, Paris, France
1988
Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, France
1984
Musée d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France
1982
FIAC Grand Palais, Galerie Etienne de Causans, Paris, France
Abbaye de Saint-Riquier, France
1981
Formes Internationales, Lille, France
1980
Galerie Étienne de Causans, Paris, France
1975
Galerie Lithos, Mouscron, Belgium
Galerie Jacqueline Store, Lille, France
EXPOSITIONS COLLECTIVES (sélection) / GROUP SHOWS (selection)
2021
Topographie de la lumière, Paris, France
2017
YIA, Carreau du temple, Paris, France
2017
Art Paris, Galerie Bacqueville, Grand Palais, Paris, France
2016
Art Paris, Galerie Bacqueville, Grand Palais, Paris, France
2015
Paradis perdu, Frac Grand Large-Hauts-de-France, Dunkerque, France
Off-Course Brussel Art Fair, Galerie Bacqueville, France
2012
Galerie Danse Lefévére, Imprimerie Campoi, Tournai, Belgium
2010
Valeurs sûres, Galerie Régis Dorval, Lille, France
Bernard Guerbadot et compagnie..., Galerie Une poussière dans l'oeil, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France
2008
Atelier de la Monnaie, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
Atelier Jean Ferlicot, École Régionale Supérieure d'Arts Plastiques, Tourcoing, France
2001
Rome, Les Artistes de la fondation Wicar, Musée de l'Hospice Comtesse, Lille, France
1994
Faculté de médecine CHR, Lille, France
1993
7 + 15, Galerie Empreinte, Arras, France
1989
Profils d'une collection, LaM Musée d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France
Médias audiovisuels, Galerie des Ponchettes, Nice, France
1987
Carte blanche, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
1985
FRAC Grand Large, Dunkerque, France
1983
Zone N, Centre culturel Saint-Gratien
Des images d'aujourd'hui, Niort, France
1982
De Matisse à nos jours, Musées des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
1981
Nouvelle figuration 3, Mulhouse, France
1980
Salon international d'art, France
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Toulon, France
1979
Les uns par les autres, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
1978
Prix Europe de peinture Kursaal, Ostende, Belgium
Tours multiple 78, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours, France
Les métaréalistes, Galerie Bellint, Paris, France
Réel, Réalisme, Réalité, Abbaye de Beaulieu-en-Rouergue, France
Galerie Étienne de Causans, Paris, France
1977
Joli mois de mai, Galerie Jacqueline Storme, Lille, France
1976
Grands et jeunes d'aujourd'hui, Grand Palais, Paris, France
COLLECTIONS
Banque Mondiale Washington
FRAC Grand Large - Hauts-de-France
LaM - Lille Métropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, Villeneuve-d'Ascq
Banque Edmond de Rothschild, Paris
Banque Populaire du Nord
Trois Suisses International
Ambassade du Brésil, Paris
Ville de Lille
Les Amis du Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris
Conseil Général du Nord
Musée d'Art moderne et d'Art contemporain, Nice
Musée de l'Estampe, Gravelines
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Nombreuses collections particulières en France, en Europe, aux États-Unis