thomas lélu

He dreamed of being a stuntman and that could indeed be the attitude that defines his art. He has made irony his tool, his material, his style. L.V.M.H.O.O.Q, Air de Paris Hilton, warholatwanadoo.fr, manuel de la photo ratée (The How-to Handbook of Bad Photography). There are no impossible associations for Thomas Lélu. He clashes words with images and concepts, he freestyles, he recomposes and unabashedly mixes art history, literature, current events, gossip... inventing his own visual reality. Thomas Lélu obviously does not conform to the stereotype of the unrecognized artist. He proudly rejects effort, fastidious work and rules in order to revel in the danger of levity. His new series, presented in Leo Scheer’s gallery, confirms the jubilatory nature of creation for the artist. After drinking a pot of paint, he empties his tubes, composing his canvas in a frenzied excess of colour and materials. A multitude of bumpy blobs, stains, sticky blots of pink, yellow, purple, blue, indigo, red… each given the right to spread, to mix with one another or even to run off the canvas. Bubble-gum paintings, created almost as a joke at Pollock’s expense or an accumulation of tubes in insolent reference to Arman, Lélu's work makes for some kind of visual bootleg, a graphic feast. The decision to paint is not a coincidence in the life of Thomas Lélu, it marks the beginning of his story in the "Fine Arts", before he decided to study graphic design and communication. Today, he returns to painting, freed from the fear of getting things wrong, having tamed it in several phases; first as a typographical tool for his giant written canvases (Ready Made in China, Cosmic Jagger), then as a graphic technique in the video clip 78/2008 that he made for Philippe Katerine, in which strokes of paint act as a highlighter. As a symbolic gesture, his self-portrait depicts him drinking paint, straight from the pot. In his new works, he emancipates his paints, gives them the freedom to move in their own right, and enters into a physical dialogue with them. The same spirit is at work in his portraits of Playboy playmates of the 60’s, for which he has assumed the responsibility of re-doing the colours. Confettis of dripping paint change the previously perfect balance of the image or camouflage it completely, leaving only a hint of the shapes beneath. Thomas Lélu’s work is a hymn to chaos and provocation. There is an insatiable need to torch any debate a little too serious, to stand on the razors edge with frank and cutting precision, to simply write “Et Merde” (And Shit) and then hang it on the wall.Jérôme Sans. 2008