Louis Granet

Works

Biography

Following his graduation from the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux, Louis Granet attended the School of Comic Illustrations in the southwestern French town of Angoulême, and later, the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg. Throughout his studies, Granet was always intrigued by the artistic potentialities of translating the fundamentals of comic illustration unto the canvas, beyond the structural restraints of a comic strip. This interest was further cemented upon Granet’s arrival in Paris, where he worked as the assistant of French artist Stéphane Calais, leading him to pursue a professional career as a full-time artist. Granet has since staged solo and group exhibitions in Paris, New York, and Luxembourg, among others. His work is also in esteemed collections such as Fondation Hubert Neumann, Fondation d'art contemporain, Société Générale and Les Arts au mur, arthothèque de Pessac.

Granet begins his artistic process by spontaneously capturing the visual iconography that bombard us in our everyday life with his camera. Such tendencies bear witness to the artist’s personal trove of photographs, ranging from interesting street signs to popular caricatures found on cereal boxes. Accordingly, Granet works through this collective imagery of contemporary life and globalized visual culture to inform and drive his artistic approach and subject matter in his paintings.

Drawing on the lineages of modern and post-modern art movements such as Pop Art and Neo-Pop Art, Granet captures the absurdity and abstraction of our visual realities in detail. Resembling the stylization of comic illustrations, the artist goes on to create digital renderings of his paintings before working on them. In playing with scale and perception, Granet moves beyond the mere reproduction and appropriation of comic illustration to foreground our contemporary realities in a discerning manner. Such includes stretching ordinary objects to be larger than life, precariously on the edge of spilling out from the canvas frame. In addition to unequally splitting his paintings into two, as though simulating the cross-section of a comic strip. Working with acrylic, Granet’s paintings carry a visual dynamism that manifest a sense of organized chaos, with each element decisively placed and staged within the canvas to form a certain narrative about our contemporary realities.

Granet is known for his series of flower paintings, which see the aggregation of flowers in an overload of saturated colours proliferated across the canvas. By enmeshing flowers originating from disparate geographical regions, ranging from the islands of the Caribbean to the major cities of Italy within an individual canvas, Granet demonstrates his artistic propensity for embracing multiplicity. Such is equally matched with the diversity of colours infused into the dense mass of flowers, enriching the painting with a sense of abundance. These clusters of flowers appear to mutate organically and permeate the frame, augmenting the chaotic atmosphere of our fast-moving contemporary world, albeit through the alternative lens of nature.

Through his exuberant compositions, Granet plays on the appetite of the viewer for narrative, compelling him or her to navigate the entanglements between the various elements.

Lives and works in Paris.

Solo Exhibitions

2020 En Plein Chic, Cuturi Gallery, Singapore

2020 Stand C15, Gilles Drouault Galerie/multiples, Paris, France

Monde Miracle, Gilles Drouault Galerie/multiples, Paris, France

Avec le Goût, Neumann Wolfson Art, New York, USA

2019 Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery, Luxembourg

CARTOON OPTIMIST, Centre d'art contemporain "atelier d'Estienne", Pont-

Scorff, France

Espace de la Société Générale, Puteaux, France
2018 Free, Super fast !!!!, Neumann Wolfson Art, New York, USA
2015 Zombie poisson coupé, Galerie Silicone, Bordeaux, France

Group Exhibitions

2020 In Full Bloom, Cuturi Gallery, Singapore

2018 Le Colin-maillard (La Nuit), duo-show with Segondurante, Pierre Poumet

Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, France

North East South West, What’s Up London, curated by Lawrence Van Hagen,

LVH Art, London, UK

A Terrible Beauty, duo show with Micheal Bevilacqua, Neumann Wolfson Art,

New York, USA

Par amour du jeu, curated by Anna Labouze & Keimis Henni, Magasins,

Généraux, Paris, France

Summer show, with Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil, Franck Miltgen and

Brian Rochefort, Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery, Luxembourg

Chorus, The Flat - Massimo Carasi, Milan, Italy
PotPourri, Neumann Wolfson Art, New York, USA

2017     La Saga, Double-V, Marseille, France
            Private Choice, Private Choice, Paris, France
            We are the ones, Carlsberg Byens Galleri, Copenhagen, Denmark
             Printers Matters 2, MAD 3, Maison Rouge, Paris, France
             Color Block, Triple V, Paris, France
             Pink Flamingo, Agent M, Paris, France
             Casse et vole!, MR 14, Paris, France
             BD Factory, Frac Aquitaine, France
             Printers Matters 1, Paris, France
2016 All I can for Christmas, Galerie des multiples
              Les noces de Cana, Double Séjour, Paris, France
           Hommages et pastiches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
             Lancement Point Contemporain n°2, X-po Studio, Paris, France
             Autofictions, Under construction gallery, Paris, France
             Projet 100%, Galerie des multiples, ART-O-RAMA, Marseille, France
              Summer group show, galerie JC, Paris, France
            Heroes, Galerie GP & Nathalie Vallois, Paris, France
            Jeune Création – 66e edition, Galerie Thaddeus Ropac Pantin, Paris, France