A member and founding-member of the avant-garde Supports/Surfaces movement in the 1970s, Claude Viallat has established himself as a leading figure in French painting. For nearly half a century, he has spurned stretchers and canvases, instead painting on unstructured or juxtaposed textiles, endlessly repeating the same motif in a palette of shimmering colours.

Sutures and Varia offers a selection of works painted in the last two years. The new Sutures series, elaborated during the recent lockdowns, is anchored for the first time in a reflection on the notion of junction.

Fabrics with unusual contours and textures are assembled, as if “sutured” by strips of fabric with floral patterns. These sutures, simultaneously friezes and bandages, are laid loose, carefully folded, and assembled by the artist. The wall can be seen through their gaps, thus revealing the artifice of the combinations.

In Viallat’s work, intuition creates the canvas. The artist explains his approach: “I can never predict how the work will turn out, and even after several decades of artistic practice, I’m still surprised by the result. Yet I always accept it as it is. It is almost a human-to-human relationship I have with the work. I do what I can with it until it no longer wants me…”