Michel Fourquet: Filling (or not) life’s spaces
with Ellen Turner Hall
The present exhibition at L’Espace des Arts in Le Boulou is dedicated to the works, past and present, of Michel Fourquet.
The first floor contains his large oil paintings created between 1989 and 2011. Energetic gestures fill the entire canvas teeming with colour and movement. You can see the brush strokes, almost hear the splash of paint and swoosh of strokes, feel the excitement of colour confronting colour.
The result resembles nests of snakes writhing in and out of each other’s embrace, elbowing their way onto the surface or barely hiding in dense foliage. In some works Fourquet uses collage, cut-out shapes suggesting interlacing leaf veins or neural networks. The canvas vibrates with their movement.
On the second floor Fourquet moves you into another universe, with his most recent works, some dated 2025. Fourquet told me he was seeking “emptiness, calm and reserve.” The support is paper, the medium watercolour, the scale reduced. White space dominates.
The key element of each composition is a triangle amid blobs of free-floating colour unrestrained by lines or boundaries. Drops and blotches are integrated into the whole. Very light touches of paint allow the water do the work, creating delicate butterfly dreams. Each work is a miniature meditation on simplicity.
The exhibition runs from 28 January to 22 March.
For more details see: www.espacedesarts.pro.
CHECK OUT ALSO.…
Collioure Capitale until 17 May 2025.
For details:www.museecollioure.com
