Jean Charles Blais’ workspace in Vence
03 December 2024
“When I work, I just want to be surprised. To feel that something I didn’t know before is coming.” Jean Charles Blais remarked in his studio in Vence, France. “I really try to find something I don’t know.” Born in 1956, in Nantes, France, Blais’ work often incorporates elements of collage through the use of discarded printed materials such as posters and newspapers into his paintings. His process involves embracing the element of chance as the representation of figures develop and unfold in his compositions. “At the beginning, I don’t know the way. If you want to do something that you didn’t know before, you have to take this sort of risk.”
Blais likens his process and the way his paintings take shape as a body of work to being ‘on a team’–imagery that supports each other through its development. “I work on many paintings at the same time. Each painting starts at a different time but they build a sort of family.”
As much as his oeuvre has developed aesthetically over the years, he continues to approach his collective practice as a work in progress. “My pictures, my universe, my drawings are absolutely not rational. When I don’t know exactly how to continue or finish a painting, I start a new one. Then the new one is in charge of finding the way to finish the first one. Then, it’s a sort of thing where everything is a work in progress, and there is no new painting.”
Blais’ practice uses scraps from posters and advertising panels that were once affixed to the walls around cities. Working with layers of printed images that have been superimposed over time, his work mirrors the layers of imagery and text from different advertising campaigns from the past, presenting remnants of consumer culture affixed together as a cohesive panorama of lived experience in the material world. Through the additive process of painting and subtractive removal of layers of paper, his work reveals and transforms itself with nostalgic elements from a wide variety of sources that cohesively represents Blais’ inquiry into ancient forms.
Vence, a historic city set in the hills of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, provides a scenic backdrop for Blais’ creative practice. The artist’s first encounter with the region happened by chance more than 35 years ago while he spent time in the region to prepare new work for an exhibition as a young artist. "It was during one of my first stays in this region for the preparation of an exhibition, that by chance and luck I was shown this somewhat abandoned Moorish house on a hill above Vence.”
Blais’ studio space is situated in a dwelling on the property which at one time served as both a chapel and a barn. “What was the most impactful for me when I started working here,” Blais said, “was being able to work outside, in the garden or in outdoor courtyards and working with the sun and natural elements in my process.”
Blais studied at the Beaux-Arts de Rennes from 1974 to 1979 and gained recognition in the art world in 1981 after participating in the exhibition ‘Finir en beauté’ curated by Bernard Lamarche-Vadel. He had his first solo exhibition in 1982 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux, which was followed by a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1987. Opera Gallery hosted Blais’ solo exhibitions ‘Spring / Summer’ in Paris in 2023 and ‘Jean Charles Blais’ in Geneva in 2024. His work was recently featured in ‘Transatlantic: Figurations of the 80s’ at Opera Gallery’s Paris location in October 2024.
