FROM 2 MARCH TO 24 APRIL 2018

LA GALERIE CIPANGO
is presenting

CHRISTOPHE TISSOT

‘’Consonance BRONZE’’

Just as the exhibition on artist’s jewellery has opened at the Museum of Decorative Arts, the Galerie Cipango is presenting an exhibition of the work of the painter Christophe Tissot, long familiar with making art jewellery, a fully-fledged sphere of expression that is very much part and parcel of his artistic line of thinking. Like Alexander Calder and Claude Lalanne, Christophe Tissot is among the handful of artists for whom creating jewellery is authentic and goes hand-in-hand with their main oeuvre. No stranger to the monumental (e.g. his 126 m. Lion Wall in Singapore, and his 30 m. painted work, Fleuve Mémoire), these pieces on view here show that the artist is also at ease with very small spaces.

Putting the graphic work and the sculptural work suggested by the show in perspective does away with any hierarchy. Here the piece of jewellery asserts its unconventional character, the better to emphasize its nobility and value as artwork.

The dreamlike world into which the artist invites us provides a chance to meet a whole host of people who, beyond their solitary appearance, draw up a harmonious constellation. The radiant, lunar faces talk to each other, calling and answering, though issuing from different forms of matter, and from different materials.

Christophe Tissot - Série Invisible days et dreamers 2013 encres, craies et tempera sur papier d’extrême -orient - Dim: 2,80 m x 1,91 m

Cuffs, rings and bronze ornaments thus become the palpable and tangible variants of the aerial figures in the large works on paper, which seem to be keeping a kindly eye on these self-perceptible extensions and incarnations.

C. Tissot, manchette bronze doré d’après la série Dreamers 2013

“It is neither through his hands, nor his feet, nor his torso that man recognizes himself in the other. Think about it: the face is the mirror of humanity… The face impresses, it leaves a trace on paper, a sensitive film that imprints our truth. Because a face may light up, that is its brief. With an open or closed gaze, the face can radiate the peace which, alone, constructs the wall in a lasting way. The Face emits and transmits light, it is the lamp in which our gaze settles and comes to rest: a light holder in the starry night. In the end, perhaps, the whole body becomes a face”. Christophe Tissot, 2010.

C. Tissot, bague bronze doré d’après la série Faces 2011

TO READ
Christophe Tissot in conversation with the writer and journalist Bernadette

Costa-Prades about… art jewellery.