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The bodies Vincent Guiro paints, draws, or sculpts do not simply emerge; they burst forth!
An emergence rises upward, inviting a sublimation that tends to erase matter, its matter, whereas an irruption comes toward you and invades with the precision of its gesture, its mass. It is a question of the treatment of volumes, of balance between volumes in each drawing, painting, or sculpture, tending to signify either a posture, or a movement in itself or of itself, but saying this is not enough… The issue is more complex, unfolding between the sheet of paper, in the large drawings of nude bodies for example, where a powerful pencil line forcefully marks off a zone, a space of its own that an additional material, charcoal, will fill through successive rebounds, through zones of flesh that gather and create the effect of this thrust beyond the sheet. This irruption is therefore no longer merely a flat visual plane; it becomes sensory and emotional: it is not an effect of chiaroscuro, Guiro does not treat volumes through symmetries or oppositions of shadow and light, he concentrates a material from which he makes a pure mass that he elaborates in a homogeneity, almost without removing or adding anything. This thrust is so violent, sometimes supported or accelerated by humble plays of cast shadow, that this is all we see, all we feel: one cannot say that it is the body of a woman, or of several women — although that is obvious — it is more modestly a matter of turns of the body, a body that no longer belongs solely to Guiro's vision, but to his hand, as if instead of drawing, instead of spreading the masses of charcoal, he never stopped caressing its volume, making it draw itself out of the sheet, fixing it at the exact moment when its irruption ends. This seems even clearer in the watercolor treatments: the pencil line outlines the expectation of the space, its potential or virtual configuration; color then gives it its carnal propulsion, the grain of its sensory expression, its plastic capacity, its visual flexibility, its poetic power. One must try, without closing one's eyes, to grasp these images with the hands, with the tactile sensitivity that is his and that gives them a force beyond pure visibility; one must try to look through touch, just as he creates through touches of the fingers, of the hand. Excerpt from: Jean-Paul MANGANARO, Confusion de genres, Paris, P.O.L., 2011, p. 587-588 https://vincentguiro.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ateliervincentguiro/ About the Artist: Jacques Guiraud was born in Nîmes on April 4, 1935. Fatherless at the age of seven, he was sent to boarding school in Lyon: he spent the war years at the manécanterie of Notre Dame de Fourvière. He would remain marked by those formative years, where the demands of classical choral singing shaped his character. Expected to take over the family shoe store, he broke away from that path very early on, rejected business studies, and entered the école des Beaux-Arts de Grenoble. In the studio of Dubreuil, a student of Matisse, his classmates renamed him Vincent, his third given name, in reference to Van Gogh. That same year, he chose his artist's name: Vincent GUIRO. In 1964, he was appointed professor at the Beaux-Arts de Grenoble. He then went to Paris and studied engraving at the Atelier Lacourière. There he spent time with Miro, Music, and Picasso. He exhibited for the first time in 1968 at the Galerie du Haut Pavé, founded by the Dominican Gilles Vallée. The purpose of this place was to give visibility to the work of young French and foreign artists. For Vincent Guiro, it was an opening onto different cultures and artistic trends. There he formed ties with Aguiar, Béchet, Kozo, and Panchal. In May 68, he took part in the social movement, demonstrated, and shared his reflections with Mannessier, Singier, and Le Moal. Deeply humanist, an advocate of art for all, he was passionate about exchange but always kept his distance from fashions and artistic movements. Radical, he remained attached to his singularity. Continuing research into the integration of Art into architecture, he developed the “gravo-sable” process on concrete. In the wake of Carl Nesjar, he created monumental works at la Défense and in several cities in France and Italy. He presented his theory of “Beau-Béton” at the école des Arts et Métiers, where he lectured. Over the following decades, Vincent Guiro developed and expanded his creative work, alternating between Monumental Art, Sculpture, and Painting. He exhibited his work in France and abroad, while remaining faithful to the Galerie du Haut Pavé.
Source: paris.fr — photo: @Vincent GUIRO