Painted and drawn achievements
The beings are naked
The irruption of the colors underlines the ridiculous glory of this population of lost, funny homunculi. The delicacy of the nuances, the luxurious transparencies, the subtle glazes belong to a beauty, to a harmony, which we do not want to renounce, even if the bodies are seized by a terrible tremor, by a vertiginous loneliness.
Torn from obscurity, the drawings save the fragility of beings at their beginning when indecision mingles with uncertain ends. The technique is impeccable, it traces the implacable path in the confusion of the night when men are born little by little. But, maybe they are dying? Fright is the common part of these living people who are still groping their way.
Workflow
Large oil painting on wood
Oil painting on wood, preparation of white backgrounds with "casé arti." Casein substitute, plus a layer of hot skin glue. Limited choice of very solid colors. Opaque, fixed to light, stable in mixtures, siccative. The binder or medium added to the oil is Venetian turpentine. Pure larch resin which increases the hardness and solidity of the dough. Production time approx. 30 hours
Claude Serpaggi's humor belongs to that, dark, loved by some surrealists or Chaval: he tries to exorcise the excess that man is confronted with when he is born. NO caricatures here but attempts to survive a bit of the customary horror of our human destinies. Attentive to everything that swarms, rummages, crawls, the organic nightmare haunts Claude Serpaggi who seems to have made an appointment, on his paintings, to all the possessed, the tormented, the excluded, the ardent, the plague-stricken, the accursed, for the lead into a savage rigodon, a burlesque and painful saraband.
Pencil portrait
In this nightmarish universe, the drawings presented look like sketches, first drafts. An apparent spontaneity of the line which contrasts with the effort that the characters portrayed seem to feel, to finally reveal the deep perplexity of the compositions.
Structures
Articulated, isolated or wall structures painted in oil on cut wood panels requiring special installations. Variable Dimensions: from 3M to 6M development. The technique of preparation of backgrounds and work is identical to the works "oils on wood". Completion time: from 3 to 6 months depending on the complexity of the structure
Sometimes, he deploys rigorous and fragile constructions in the space where other faces and other bodies can be found, like so many evil, invasive proliferation, fleeing the too narrow framework of the canvases to better mingle with us. Unstable, moving, they seem to collect the frenzy that carries this painful but stubborn procession: they tremble, vibrate, shudder, to add to them the silent incantation of anamorphoses that broken mirrors have abandoned in the air.
Big drawings
Composition on the basis of a direct general sketch or an assembly of sketches forming a homogeneous whole, The pencils used are: 3 and 4 B for the installation, very light treatment. Final execution with these same pencils plus 6 and 9 B and stick pencil for the contrasts, line and dark surface, crumb eraser allowing to obtain greasy surfaces tinted equivalent to a stump, then resumed with directional or multidimensional hatching
Since Goya, we know that Saturn is a cruel, insatiable God .... The children of Job, the cousins of Diogenes, feed him. We are its victims without submitting. Crippled, fragile, dying but standing, we claim this poignant nobility of a humanity that never gives up. There is a sort of universality of the atrocious which comes to question a revolt which does not discourage the absurdity of our fate. From this parade of threatened, pitiful beings, however, springs a kind of joy, heady madness.
70_s
Claude Serpaggi watches the men move around him. He is curious about their movements, their presence, he observes them, holds them back with a pencil or a pen. He does not say anything. He lets them live, flourish. He is never satisfied by this extravagance which seems inexhaustible: this life, around us, is a challenge, an intoxication, a curse.
Technique Mixte
Technical wash and arch vellum are the most commonly used, especially for all large pencil and mixed drawings as well as for portraits. Also use of artisanal and industrial rag paper. Use: pencil, collage, pen, Indian ink, black markers, gouaches. 40 hours is the production time for a large format work, approximately 110 x 75 or more
These works propose to show, through these few works the progression from drawing to painting and sculpture seen as outcomes, to better mark out the trajectory of the characters reduced to their carnal and immaterial envelope, responding to each other in the another in a last breath at the edge of the abyss
Humor
Drawings of approximately 21 x 30 format made with a pen, Indian ink wash. Mostly without caption. For the entire production, the entire work, no reading grid, which always remains suggestive.
These funny or painful faces, whose fossilized masks soften and soon freeze with the mimicry of an old tree trunk, make up a whole caricatural universe where despair and humor jostle in the same vortices, through of a distorting mirror of a painter draftsman. Atrophied stumps, goiters, abscesses or improvised prostheses follow the infernal round, to the rhythm of the unbridled imagination of the visionary.
Portraits
No description is available for this type.