territory_loneliness_serie, 5 digital paintings, each 120x85cm

• Territory_Loneliness_serie [territoire_solitude]

• This series is about a "lack", a presence however in the absence of the “figure".

• In these times of more or less forced isolation, of more or less marked "social distancing" ... the central idea of ​​putting the face into perspective has been very affected, to the point that it is an indistinct form, a little disturbing which became the symbol of these faces. These faces idealized as specters and whose gaping hole of absence reveals both the unfathomable mystery and the deep banality. 

• Abstract art trivialized until it has lost any capacity for questioning is most often only used to trace an art history somewhat dated in museums or to decorate the walls of bourgeois salons, at best the halls of reception of luxury buildings… No longer disturbing any established order, abstract art has often become an inert consensual object.

• Unable to use the photo to "figure" and put it in perspective, I had to avoid the trap of ease of abstraction ... the pixels (23345 in each of these images), a formidable and sometimes lethal weapon here become the construction tool bearing shapes and colors. Drawn and colored the old fashioned way by hand, these pixels enhance digital art. The bourgeois and the conservatives do not like digital art either on a screen where it serves as a technological alibi as an indication of a somewhat outmoded modernity ... and which justly screened… Hand-made designed pixels when our life run the risk to be controlled by ubiquitous sensors and sophisticated algorithms might be a way to claim the absolute priority of “the human”.

• 4 digital paintings therefore for this series, plus one that shows the process ... Each in 120x85cm format, size is important here, because of the pixels which, on the contrary of »absence" are naturally invisible.

mask_hero serie

Mask_Hero_portraits

An epidemic, an unhealthy virus, an invisible enemy, an air of the Middle Ages plague, a hint of obscurantism…. And, of course, people in anguish who are suffering and who are our friends. I didn’t want to make it an aesthetic pretext or images that testify. We don’t photograph the air we breathe. The infectious virus has transformed our cities and our surroundings; the mask has become the accomplice of our wanderings. Behind the masks we no longer see the smiles, the glances are blurred. Passers-by in the street, those we meet without knowing them, emit signals that confirm some abstract connivance. When these signals disappear, it is a relationship with others that goes out as fleeting and imperceptible as it is. And it feels like loneliness. We no longer know in this flood of masks if we protect ourselves from the others or if we protect them from us. This portraits’ serie speaks of isolation, a new genre in these times of tendency towards trans-humanism.

22 images for an art of the moment, of here and now. 

22 large size images that only make sense in this format (160x200cm) in order to keep the illusion of reality at bay.

Francois BANCON, February 2020.

the Tribute_serie, 17 digital prints. The “Tribute_serie”, After decades in producing “images”, I did ask myself what were the “engines” or triggers, not only from the point of view of graphic expression but also ideas, that has somehow shaped or influenced my own views.

 tribute_Michel Onfray, 250x200cm

 tribute_Andy Warhol, 250x200cm

 tribute_George Orwell, 300x300cm

 tribute_James Ellroy, 200x135cm

 tribute_Louis Ferdinand Celine, 150x150cm

 tribute_Marcel Duchamp, 200x160cm

 tribute_Marguerite Duras, 266x200cm

 tribute_Michel Houellebecq, 266x200cm

 tribute_Michel Serres, 200x160cm

 tribute_Noam Chomsky, 320x155cm

 tribute_Philippe Djian, 250x188cm

 tribute_Pier Paolo Pasolini, 250x200cm

 tribute_Regis Debray, 300x200cm

 tribute_Roland Barthes, 200x115cm

 tribute_Serge Daney, 200x200cm

 tribute_Simone Weil, 250x200cm

tribute_Susan Sontag, 250x200cm

The “Tribute_serie”,

After decades in producing “images”, I did ask myself what were the “engines” or triggers, not only from the point of view of graphic expression but also ideas, that has somehow shaped or influenced my own views.

I’m more influenced by the “written word” or “writing”, in general through books.

So, I did finally compile some of the authors who helped me, all along the last 40 years, to find my way. That can be through Politics, Philosophy, Literature or even Arts.

The result is in these 17 images in which, for each of them, I have tried to evoke this “path of influence”.

Certainly, these 17 individuals are not exhaustive of all the many authors or thinkers that have influenced me but these final 17, in my opinion, relate more to our current times.

Each and All of these authors, thinkers have, in their own ways, gifted me with a knowledge.

Knowledge is the source of emancipation, it is this knowledge that I try to honor here, either the knowledge acquired from books or from living examples.

Some of these people are still alive, some are dead… the influence remains.

Actually, I have been inspired years ago by the album that Lou Reed did in tribute to Andy Warhol.

Francois BANCON, July 2019, about the “tribute_Serie”.