Jean-Luc Manz
Jean-Luc Manz was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1952. He lives and works in Lausanne.
Jean-Luc Manz's artistic approach is structured in such a way that one painting can comprise elements capable of summoning all the other paintings. The intrinsic logic which, over almost thirty years of production, binds all the formal experiences Manz has conducted in the field of geometric abstraction, goes far beyond the notion of a coherent body of work. Rather, it is an attitude that has more to do with the necessity to invent strategies to protect his work from an overly restrictive identity of an abstract painter.
Thus, over the years, he constantly renews his formal vocabulary, his colour palette, but also his way of reinterpreting different trends formerly addressed in abstract art. He develops systematic methods that most often are tied to a reality and in which appropriation, like ready-made, plays a crucial role.
However, these processes do not arise from a critical position of the artist with regard to the practices and discourses of his contemporaries; on the contrary, he puts an emphasis on art as an experience, as a possible relation to the world where affect and experience are as important as diverging from pre-existing forms.
— Courtesy Catherine Othenin-Girard, Art as an experience: from playful to contemplative (extract)
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