JEAN-CHARLES EUSTACHE

Jean-Charles Eustache's paintings explore the phenomenology of perception through light and time. Centering on questions of measure and fragmentation, repetition and variation, they unfold as an investigation of temporality through the gaps between different elements such as shadow and light and the organization of solids and voids. Executed in acrylic on wood, with extreme attention to surface and structured by grids of pastel tones and muted colors, his work is circumscribed in small formats, inviting the viewer for a prolonged contemplation and intimacy with the surface. 

Eustache’s body of work can be understood through the relationship between two distinct periods associated with figuration and abstraction, crossing the boundaries of both and standing at the crossroads between memory, sight, and blindness. The first period, until 2014, during which the artist was preoccupied with the visual representation of memories connected to places and landscapes of his childhood spent in Guadeloupe before joining an institute for the visually impaired in metropolitan France; and the second period beginning in 2015 when he seems to embrace abstraction through studies of light and time in small scale minimal formats that unfold through seriality. 

Engaging with the way an image inscribes itself, vibrates, and asserts itself simultaneously as truth and fiction, Eustache’s works navigate the delicate balance between truth and fiction, containment and proliferation. Displayed in meticulously ordered grids, Eustache’s paintings evoke the quiet observation of facades kissed by sunlight. Duration stretches, as modulations of light reveal the surface’s reliefs and hollows, give consistency to the hours and the circadian rhythms, and mark the imperceptible changes of atmosphere, embodying the passage of hours and the infinitesimal shifts that shape our perception of time. 

Jean-Charles Eustache (b. 1969, Baie-Mahault, Guadeloupe) graduated from ESCAM, Clermont-Ferrand Art School, France in 2004. His first institutional monographic exhibition “From Dusk to Dark” was held at FRAC Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand in 2021. Selected group exhibitions include “Contente d’etre aujourd’hui”, Manifesta Lyon (France, 2022); “Totems de la subjectivité”, MASC Sables d’Olonne (2018, France); recto/verso, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2015, France); “Terrains Vague”, Le Magasin / ESAD Grenoble (2014, France); “Dehors la flore est à l'orage”, Centre culturel Valery-Larbaud, Vichy (2012, France); “XS PARIS”, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris (2007, France); “Du Bist Hier”, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin (2005, Germany). Eustache’s work is included in a number of public and private collections including FRAC Auvergne, Centre national des arts plastiques, and Fondation Collas. Jean-Charles Eustache lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand, France.