Sacha Cambier de Montravel

His pictural practice begins with the choice of the wood panel as medium, smooth and rigid, where craft and art become one. In the manner of narratives that are traditionnaly read on polyptychs or antependia, he uses his comic-book style to create enigmatic paintings, full of codes and symbols. Through a masterful play on perspective, several miniaturized narratives, illustrated by motley scenes, coexist in his works. Resolutely graphic in detail, yet full of substance thanks to contrasts of light and shadow, and reflections of gold or silver leaf, his painting assumes Byzantine, Gothic, Flemish Primitive and Romantic influences. The eye can recognize hints of great masters such as Bosch, Dürer, Gustave Doré, Cranach, Van Eyck and Patinier. But this aesthetic familiarity, deeply rooted in the history of painting and its ancient references, is hijacked by an iconography straight out of ultra-modernity. From seemingly Edenic landscapes, such as the creeks of Marseilles, emerge garbage bags; mountains are lizarded by freeways, and backgrounds mottled by industrial zones. Nature, as a backdrop, is shown in its disenchanted reality, dominated and exploited by human activity. We sense a kind of solastalgia, a contemporary distress linked to the awareness and anxiety of environmental change.