Klethi Jean-Roch

My artistic journey began more than 40 years ago, with my first exhibition at the age of 19. Seeking to create a personal language, I decided early on to abandon traditional brushstrokes in favor of other techniques: sponge printing, stencils, misting, and liquid color projections. My aim was to capture pure sensation, exploring textures, transparencies, and the vibrations of color.

By incorporating materials such as sawdust, cardboard, and especially partially unraveled textiles, I opened up a graphic world where fibers trace their own lines and patterns. No longer was there a need to hold a pencil or brush. Over time, the symbolic charge of these materials revealed itself to me, so much so that my works began to resonate with the state of the world, expressing rupture and continuity, tearing and repair, connection and disconnection.

This approach also took on a personal dimension. Having studied the urban and social history of a textile valley in my youth, I later recognized the connection between my art and my experience of this industrial and human heritage. Created largely from reclaimed materials, my works are rooted in a shared memory, where the materials themselves bear witness to stories of transformation, fragility, and...

After I benefited from the art teaching at the secondary school in the visual arts section, I began architecture studies with classes in visual arts, and I am a graduated architect. I nevertheless consider myself mainly as a self taught artist. I extended my personal work from the end of my architecture studies through a postgraduate program at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. This research focused on the urban, industrial, and social history of a textile industry town in Alsace.

1976 - "Jeune peinture" - Palais du Rhin - Strasbourg. My first exhibition
1996 - "Galerie Rendez-vous" - My first art exhibition in a gallery (in Strasbourg, France)
1996 - St'Art Strasbourg - My first contemporary art fair participation
2004 - Shanghai International Art Fair
2008 - AIDA galerie - Strasbourg. First exhibition in this gallery.
2014 - Painting Prize at the Lorraine Artists Exhibition in Nancy (France)