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From April 24 to July 31, 2026, as part of a year-long exhibition program celebrating the 150th anniversary of Constantin Brancusi's birth, Galerie Negropontes Paris presents a solo show by Étienne Moyat.
The exhibition Ligne de vie brings together a series of sculpted panels and wooden sculptures, along with a selection of recent paintings. Moyat’s work resonates with the Brancusian legacy through an essential relationship with wood, gesture, form, and time. For Étienne Moyat, creation is never seen as a final destination, but as a continuous journey within his artistic practice. Careful not to break with the past, the artist situates his work in a continuum where gesture, material, and memory are inseparable. Once a path is chosen, everything else flows naturally from it. This path remains deliberately open, under construction, without a fixed endpoint. Trained as a cabinetmaker, Étienne Moyat works directly from sawn planks, following the principle of direct carving. Like Brancusi, he considers wood not merely as a material, but as a living substance carrying time, history, and energy. He sculpts, burns, brushes, and paints it with a respectful and attentive approach to what the material can reveal. The use of the chainsaw, a paradoxically liberating tool, allows for a gesture that is simultaneously free, instinctive, and controlled. The artist’s collection of sculpted panels and wooden sculptures, where surfaces are traversed by fluid lines, strata, and rhythms, testifies to a conscious and measured practice, where technique recedes in favor of a sensory experience. They fit into a transient and fragile logic, based on a constant search for balance. Complementing this sculptural body of work, the exhibition also presents a selection of recent paintings, representing a new development in the artist’s practice. Approached with great freedom of gesture and emotion, painting extends the inquiries of sculpture by exploring, through different means, the relationship to gesture, rhythm, and time. It constitutes a space for experimentation where energy circulates differently, without breaking away from the concerns of sculptural work. Inspired by abstract expressionism, neo-expressionism, and primitivism, Étienne Moyat works on large formats with a spontaneous and instinctive approach. Vivid colors, thick layers, and rhythmic compositions make painting a space for sensitive exploration, resonating with his work in wood. Whether sculpting or painting, Étienne Moyat questions our connection to life, space, and time. His work maintains a direct relationship with material and gesture, inviting the viewer to an emotional experience.
Source: paris.fr — photo: Galerie Negropontes