Etienne Gros paints fragmentary anatomies, truncated bodies, seemingly separated from any relationship with all that is physical and physiognomy. But these bodies, their sides, their pelvises, their knees - as isolated as they may be from the bodily architecture, as if captured instantaneously in an obscure fight - concentrate and liberate mysterious forces successively.
Manipulator of matter, the artist uses the technique of marouflage, applying to each canvass a thick sheet of paper which lives and moves chemically on contact with acrylic paint.
Extract from a text by Eric Verneuil
SMOKES
It is the sooty deposit left by a flame that gives "body" to what Etienne Gros calls his "smoke drawings".
He uses the flame of a candle or a paraffin lamp to trace unpredictable, delicate soft lines of immense fragility on sheets of white paper.
The artist draws with whorles of smoke, letting himself be bewitched by the random patterns traced by the smoke. Sometimes the result is pure magic, sometimes not.
–
–
