Icarus Painting

Jean-Christophe Stauder is a painter born in 1969. He lives in Troyes (France). He developed an early taste for art and especially black and white photography. He then experimented a work around light and composition that will lay the foundations of his future work as a painter. He opens his eyes by participating in an internship with Pascal Dolémieux at the Rencontres internationales de la photographie d'Arles. His interest in the artistic world led him to work for fifteen years as a journalist and photographer, particularly specialized in the cultural sector. In parallel, he never ceases to experiment and express his inspiration through drawing and ink. This led him to participate in a first collective exhibition on the island of Gorée during the Biennale of contemporary art in Dakar (Senegal) in 1998. Her exploration of ink work has continued for the past six years around ink-based work from China and Japan (traditional technique), watercolour, tempera (egg), gouache and pigment making: walnut brou, smoke black, ochre… He then turned to the world of publishing by illustrating a collection of short stories, a poetic work. He collaborates as an illustrator in digital magazines and as a press cartoonist with the Swiss press. It is his meeting two years ago with Gilbert Wolfisberg, professor of painting and creator of the Art-quarium gallery in Geneva (Switzerland), which allows him to acquire new tools for the benefit of a more built pictorial composition based, in particular, on the golden ratio, in a dynamic approach combining harmony and movement. Since then, his preferred medium is oil painting on linen canvas chassis. Her favourite themes are movement, energy, dance, music, nature, symbolism, mythology… Inscribing his work in his time, he conceives his activity as a painter as an artistic action likely to contribute to the debate, even to shake consciences. In a manifesto, he presents his approach: “The prevailing catastrophism and the latent pessimism are eating away at people’s minds and leading to renunciation and abstention. They create a stupefaction of minds and bodies. Frozen ideas spread, sad passions dominate. New cults reduce the space of freedom still available. Whether they are called “Hygiene”, “Safety”, “Consumption”, “Digital”, “Bio-technology” or “Bellicism”. New Babels intrude between the peoples and divide them. It is high time to consider desirable tomorrows, to sow the future and to bring the Wonderful back into our lives.