"Landscapes of the unspeakable" Exhibition by Jean-Michel Comte

The exhibition

The WRP Foundation is delighted to welcome the artist Jean-Michel Comte, whose work is part of our artistic programme focusing on architecture, urbanism and design.

‘The landscapes presented by Jean-Michel Comte are intimate visions that the artist powerfully perceives and experiences, transcriptions of the inner world that drives him.

In this new series of drawings, he invites us to discover his representation of the landscape; the one we don't expect, the one we don't see or the one we don't imagine. Usually more deliberately abstract and fond of flat areas obtained by saturating writing or methodical, meticulous scribbles (some of which will be present here), this time he invites us into a universe of geometric shapes, infinite buildings, volumes of which we see only one end, leaving us to construct the rest of the image using our own imagination.

These sculptural forms, suggested, seem to shout inaudible words to the viewer. They appear in the midst of these black-and-white compositions, evoking a tormented exploration of structure and space. Jean-Michel Comte plays with the codes of architecture to suggest impossible edifices, oscillating between solidity and abstraction. It's yet another duality revealed in the artist's work, between illusion and truth, clarity and darkness, restlessness and relaxation.

Interlocking forms that can't be fitted in, with no beginning and no end, we are invited into a kind of trap. A place with no way out, yet open to the infinite; are we heading for darkness, or are we coming out of it?

Elegant as they are, the black surfaces created with a simple roller pen are a reminder of the time spent obsessively filling in sheets of paper. Black and white are the only weapons at Jean-Michel Comte's disposal, and he explores their countless possibilities.

Through this obsession with gesture, the artist also questions the essence of drawing as the foundation of all architectural construction, linking the artistic gesture to the gesture of building.

The artist

Jean-Michel Comte was born in Nice in 1975. He has lived and worked in Geneva since 2000. He attended Peter Roesch's workshop at HEAD (ESAV at the time) and regularly exhibits his work in the region and in France. He is represented by Galerie Mabe in Geneva.