CCC is presenting the new solo exhibition of Stéphane Calais. Considered to be one of the most important French artists of his generation, in the past few years Calais has accomplished many different projects both in France and internationally, for galleries and private commissions, such as large-scale murals painted in 2012 for the Havas Tower. “in France” is the first solo exhibition dedicated to his work in a French gallery since 2008.

The artist is taking this occasion to focus on just one of the many aspects of his art. Hence the exhibition is given over entirely to painting, and it brings together a set of recent or unseen paintings as well as several large-scale murals. Stéphane Calais explores the possibilities of the medium by playing with different formats and materials, giving equal importance to paper and mural work using thick frames, canvases bought in street markets, or very thick objects as canvasses.

Calais’ painting is a fusion of various references, and similarly he fuses the styles used and the colour spectra employed. He can encompass decorative styles,  and abstract and representative art. This ambiguity can be seen in the only figures on show in the exhibition- masks. Like decoration, they are simply surfaces applied on top of others, hiding everything below whilst clearly being themselves on display.

Calais plays also with scale, shifting between fragments and entirety, detail, all over, and framing. He repaints details from certain paintings scaled up to fill a wall, and hangs others using digital reproductions of fragments of the paintings. Throughout the exhibition Stéphane Calais creates shifts, changes in how we read and perceive the work. “It’s all about having different views on the same landscape, or creating different landscapes with a single viewpoint”, he says.

Choosing to make an exhibition of two dimensional painting might seem to be rather strange for those who know Stéphane Calais otherwise multifaceted work. The artist works equally in media which include drawing, silkscreen printing, sculpture and installations. Mixing these media, he is just as at home in the worlds of art history and ideas, references and artistic domains, passing from great art to decoration or cartoon strips. For him diversity has been a conscious choice since the very beginning, and is an artistic position that affords him different viewpoints allowing him to express the different layers of reality that he so enjoys exploring.

Up till now Stéphane Calais has always claimed drawing as his ‘mother tongue’, the basis for all the others. The exhibition shown at the CCC assesses the specifics and the development of his painting, which is currently moving toward a new kind of freedom and autonomy.