Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 2

Michel Piquette
Nuit Blanche à Paris (4)

2014

$1,800
£1,379.48
€1,585.47
CA$2,528.19
A$2,829.51
CHF 1,481.15
MX$34,373.41
NOK 18,806.80
SEK 17,747.43
DKK 11,830.41

About the Item

Text by Anaïs Castro It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take root in an aesthetic tradition a few decades old already: we can think of Claude Tousignant’s or Kenneth Nolan’s circular paintings, among others. For Boris Chukhovich, “chromatic interactions make the exhibition space between the work and the viewer more dynamic, livelier.” While one progresses in the gallery’s space, the work reveals new details, new ways of viewing it. Even by standing still, it is the work that activates itself under the attentive eyes of the viewer. By yielding an energetic relation between the work and its public, Piquette snatches the attention of the viewer and embarks them in a game of optics. If upon first glance these works appear impeccable, of an irreproachable artistic achievement that we could associate to Les Plasticiens, a closer look reveals imperfections that humanize the general composition and register the hand of the artist. This is particularly surprising considering that Piquette’s creative approach, while borrowing from a certain visual vocabulary, is translated through photography, not painting. Printed on aluminum, Piquette’s photographs seek to fix the energy of a city captured in a concise moment: the city’s exhilarating movement, its complexity, its lights as much as its colours. All taken during various nocturnal journeys, the works in this series are urban portraits that make up the first part of the artist’s trilogy initiated a few years ago. In Piquette’s work, there is a recurring concern with optical phenomena that the artist chooses to convey by drawing a relation between the worlds of painting and photography. The static dynamism of his work reveals his position as an observer, of his eager eye in front of the movements and lights of the cities he visits at nighttime. By redistributing the urban energy he captures during his after-hours wanderings into visual structures all equally disorienting, Piquette reinstates in the current artistic vocabulary visual preoccupations that carry a rich background. Many aesthetic considerations are combined in this work. We can think of the urban landscape at the source of his creative process, of time which he places as the subject of his work or of the chromatic system, simultaneously his primary influence and the result of his technical manipulations. This richness is precisely where the strength of Piquettes’ work resides. By juxtaposing on a same surface a plurality of levels of meaning, the artist grasps the complexity of contemporary urban spheres, their affluence and abundance. In a manner evocative of Baudelaire’s chiffonnier, Piquette’s is an urban observer that reinvests the space of the city to capture nothing but its essence.
  • Creator:
    Michel Piquette (Canadian)
  • Creation Year:
    2014
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 24 in (60.96 cm)Diameter: 24 in (60.96 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Montreal, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU4761324093

More From This Seller

View All
Nuit Blanche à Paris (1)
By Michel Piquette
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Text by Anaïs Castro It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision tak...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Digital

Nuit Blanche à Paris (2)
By Michel Piquette
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Text by Anaïs Castro It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision tak...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Digital

Nuit Blanche à Barcelone 2
By Michel Piquette
Located in Montreal, Quebec
It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take root in an aesthetic tr...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Paper, Digital

Nuit blanche à Amman
By Michel Piquette
Located in Montreal, Quebec
It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take root in an aesthetic tradition a few decades old alread...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Digital

Nuit Blanche à Tel Aviv
By Michel Piquette
Located in Montreal, Quebec
It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take root in an aesthetic tradition a few decades old alread...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Aluminum

Nuit Blanche à Jérusalem
By Michel Piquette
Located in Montreal, Quebec
It is the luminous colours of Michel Piquette’s works that first catch the eye. His chromatic circles that stir up vision take root in an aesthetic tr...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Aluminum

You May Also Like

French Contemporary Art by Paul Gallaud - Osmose Bande 1 N2
By Paul Gallaud
Located in Paris, IDF
Dibond mirror Paul Gallaud is a French visual artist born in 1984 who lives and works in Croix, near Lille, France. After graduating with a BAC STI Applied Arts at the Institut Sain...
Category

2010s Contemporary Abstract Paintings

Materials

Mirror

Time Invariant
By Franco DeFrancesca
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Resin coated and mounted to layers of plywood, these digital/mixed media ‘picture objects’ represent interpretations of contemporary visual culture charmed by minimalism, modernism...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Resin, Panel, Digital Pigment

Polygen
By Franco DeFrancesca
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Resin coated and mounted to layers of plywood, these digital/mixed media ‘picture objects’ represent interpretations of contemporary visual culture charmed by minimalism, modernism...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Resin, Panel, Digital Pigment

French Contemporary Art by Diana Torje - Manifest
By Diana Torje
Located in Paris, IDF
Diana Torje is a prizewinning Romanian artist born in 1983 & based in Paris whose works have been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout France & worldwide. Inspired by nature ...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Clay, Canvas

Prochromatique No.1117
Located in PARIS, FR
In the middle of the eighties Perez-Flores started the creation of a large series of pictures and reliefs called "Prochromatiques", in which the vertical elements are dominating. The...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Kinetic Abstract Paintings

Materials

Wood, Acrylic, Wood Panel

French Contemporary Art by Marie-Pierre Autonne - Chacun Chez Soi
By Marie-Pierre Autonne
Located in Paris, IDF
Acrylic & oil on wooden panel Marie-Pierre Autonne is a French artist born in 1960 who lives & works in Angers, France. She studied at Penninghen in Paris, France. She worked for se...
Category

2010s Contemporary Abstract Paintings

Materials

Wood, Mixed Media