katesommers

SINCE COMING to the United States in 2003, the French painter, Thibaud Thiercelin, has produced a body of work whose subject matter is both personal and universal: the birth of his first child. While this series is primarily an intimate family portrait, these paintings tap into our collective memory and
go far beyond one artist’s experience of the world.

The paintings on view move between figuration and abstraction, narration and non- sequitors. The series began before Thiercelin’s son, Valentin, was diagnosed with autism at 3 years of age. As Thiercelin painted his way through his understanding of his son’s disability, passages of both ecstasy and despair are expressed in the art, occasionally sharing the same canvas. As a self-taught artist, Thiercelin’s work shares certain aspects of outsider art. While the definition of outsider art today is murky at best, it was initially described as spontaneous and unpremeditated, and almost always associated with artists who had no academic training. Sometimes called visionary art, this kind of visual expression is often associated with a sense of psychic immediacy, and often the subject matter, if there is any, has a childlike and naïve quality in its rendering. These aspects of unfiltered expression are all evident in Thiercelin’s work.

For this artist, reality is constantly shifting. A moment of pastoral peace or domestic bliss shifts quickly into an exploding building or a plane dropping bombs. Within Thiercelin’s painting, viewers will find a visual language that is deeply, sometimes opaquely, personal, but they will also see glimpses of an all too familiar world. Mr. Thiercelin has exhibited broadly in Europe and the United States, including participation in the 14th Grand Prix de Peinture de la Ville de St. Grégoire (St. Grégoire, France), the Salon de Mai (Paris, France), Les Visages de Notre Humanité at Grand Halle de la Villette (Paris, France), Galerie Allaire-Aigret (Paris, France), Salon de Montrouge (France), Ellarslie Trenton City Museum (NJ), and the WPA Gallery in Princeton. He will be returning to France this December with his family after being an Artist-in-residence at the Arts Council of Princeton since February, 2004.

Kate Somers, Curator

This show is supported by the Eden Family of Services, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to provide lifespan services for children and adults with autism, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy of the United States in New York, and the French Consulates of Princeton and Philadelphia. For information on the artwork: thibaudthiercelin@yahoo.com