David Wolle

Born in 1969.
Lives and works in Villefranche sur Saône, France

Presentation

David Wolle makes small plaster objects, which unrecognizable as such are then enlarged and represented by the artist on canvas, vaguely bringing to mind objects which could belong to reality. Therefore there is an almost hyper-realistic treatment in this unlikely and abstract process. The sizes are moderate, inexact, assembled together and adapted to the subject which they highlight in massive or conversely elongated shapes. As well, the lighting effects seized from afar reveal the traces of the paint brush which makes its presence felt; what matters here is to indicate how much the work tries to tell us about paint and how much it absorbs us- the viewer.
Communicating to us about painting but deterring those who try to define what they look at: it involves artistic mishaps - dripping thick paint through the process - where an illusion appears of something hidden, unless it's simply a compact volume, given rhythm through a monochromatic geometry or alphabet-like figurine.

The simultaneously familiar and sibylline titles mark this will to present from reality, only a universe that exclusively through painting we would able to comprehend. Beyond the colours, the plaster serves to create the small painted sculptures, which are then subjected to a number of fantasies which evoke thoughts of organic forms, unbridled anthropomorphisms and chance discoveries. There is something to see here but what one looks at defies the abstract language that one searches for and appropriates, as well as what the eye naturally searches for.

David Wolle's works make it clear that painting is not only an object for recognising reality but rather for learning what unites us to it and show how the artist can trace a comprehensible symbol in regard to verbal thought. His oeuvre is frustrating in the sense that we ask for more, and this sentiment is integral in the viewer's response.

BTN in l'Art Vues, May 2006
The titles and individual subjects of David Wolle's unusually small paintings, deliberately created so, at first glance bring a smile to the spectator's face, but from these works much more worryingly stems the sensation of a startling foreign nature. Pondering one's childhood dreams, one starts to crave for banquets in palaces constructed out of cake in mouth-watering forms, for feasts on marsh mellow structures and for an orgiastic assortment of pastilles, creams and caramelized pretzels. But these luxurious delicacies that draw from the libertine feasts of the 18th century make us aware of the disillusions and disenchantments of the days after the party, the dawn after a festive-filled night. The pink and bluish creams, the snowy mountains of whipped cream where the acidic pastille sticks and then turns into a viscous waste, liquefied into vile puddles of vomit, all of a sudden reveals a certain decorative beauty. One keels over, sickened, to the point of fainting, but when we begin to make sense of these ugly constructions in front of us, like Claudel in front of his Dutch natures mortes, of the steel and inexorable grip of time unravelling the subject's originally refined state, painting recaptures its force and imposes it on a very thin line between jubilation and melancholy.

Because David Wolle paints the ancient with an astounding modernity, he exercises an almost trompe-l'oeil quality for fun, in the rigid perspective of his mise-en-scenes, coloured and luminous values and the learned constructions of elusive patisseries and confectionaries. He uses a clear and suave colourization, layered on in light coats granting him the transparency of a wash tint. This colourization reminds the viewer of the enamelled chromatism employed by Bronzino as well as some mannerist painters, but customized with the seductive, pop art colour schemes similar to those of Mel Ramos or David Hockney. But as well, contrary to the latter two, the seductively light, pastel treated and dreary colour ranges of a fatal and frozen milkyness shown in certain Matthew Barney paintings and videos.

Though architecturally closed in their flabby softness, whoever lingers in front of these creamy frames will reminiscence about other memories. David Wolle seems to have condensed and crystalized here the components of his fantasy museum. One can accordingly see in his oeuvres a type of pop and postmodern reference to Fautrier, but of which the 'cataplasms of vomit' display the lightness of doughnuts stuffed full with oddly tasting, Chinese prawns. Again, one lets oneself think of Tanguy's lunar landscapes filled with cartilage-moulded shapes, but also of Dali's flabby, medusa-like figures or indeed Chirico's antiquarian and tragic dreamy landscapes. We can all also recall the 'visions' of ideal cities that the intarsiatori from the renaissance in the wake of the urbanist propositions of Laurana and Francesco de Giorgio Martini, once wanted to represent, or the disconcerting premises of the panoptic and totalitarian architectural buildings of which the 'ideal' aspect, the two appalling monsters of the 20th century, fascism and communism had wanted to numb-which we know all about as infernal counterpoints. David Wolle's architecture represents an infantine response to a nightmare. Like a bird singing, his constructions enchant one another while not trying to avoid the disenchantment that will come to pass and inevitably stay: from here these extracts of nursery rhymes, children's hymns, childish onomatopoeic expressions and secret languages thrive as if to exorcise the terrifying legislations that will bring an end to the human race.

David Wolle initially gives form to his patisserie shapes in some mouldable pastry, then paints and puts them into portrait form in order to produce his small sculptures. Once represented on canvas, he destroys them like a child building a castle or a palace of building blocks, sand or cardboard would. His paintings remain beautiful though and that is clear.



Bernard Ceysson


Solo shows at Ceysson Gallery
David Wolle, Saint-Etienne
January 22 - March 05, 2022

David Wolle, Saint-Etienne
May 18 - July 23, 2017

David Wolle, Luxembourg
June 06 - August 02, 2015

David Wolle, Paris
March 28 - May 11, 2013

David Wolle, Saint-Etienne
September 06 - December 22, 2012

David Wolle, Luxembourg
November 10, 2011 - January 07, 2012

David Wolle, Luxembourg
March 03 - May 01, 2010

David Wolle, Saint-Etienne
December 11, 2008 - January 25, 2009


Group shows at Ceysson Gallery
Spring Saint-Étienne, Saint-Etienne
June 12 - July 25, 2020

10 YEARS in Luxembourg, Wandhaff
June 02 - August 04, 2018

Bagarre Générale - 5 Ans, Saint-Etienne
March 24 - May 15, 2011


Solo Shows

2017
a Expon Poupeinsky, Galerie Ceysson & Bénetière, Saint-Etienne, France

2016
L'instar, URDLA, Villeurbanne, France

2015
David Wolle, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg,
Le Pan, la Pente / C.A.P, Saint-Fons, France

2014
ArtGenève-Solo show, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Geneva, Switzerland
Adaptive Daydreaming / Galerie Vasistas, Montpellier, France

2013
Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris, France

2012
The Fantasy Land - Works by David Wolle, Tap Seac Gallery, Macao, China

2011
Docks Art Fair, Lyon, France
Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

2010
Galerie Bernard Ceysson Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Musée Paul Dini, Villefranche-sur- Saône, France

2008
Galerie Bernard Ceysson Saint-Étienne, France
FRAC, Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, France

Group Shows
2020
Printemps , Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière, Saint-Étienne, France

2016
Painting in oil is very difficult, Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France
Drawing Room 016, La Panacée, Galerie Vasistas, Montpellier, France
Abstractions, un été contemporain,, Musée Paul Dini, Villefranche/Saône, France

2015
Foto Malgrado, Galerie Vasistas, Montpellier, France
Cherchez Alice !, Centre de sculpture romane du maitre de Cabestany, Cabestany, France

2014
Cherchez Alice !, Centre de sculpture romane du maitre de Cabestany, Cabestany, France
Les esthétiques d'un monde désenchanté, C.A.C Meymac, Meymac, France
L'Oeil et le coeur 2, Carré Sainte-Anne, Montpellier, France

2013
Histoire d'objets, collège Voie Domitienne, Le Crès, France

2011
Que ton aliment soit ta seule médecine !, Lycée Auguste-Loubatières, Agde, France
Zanda 5, Anciens locaux de l'école des Beaux-Arts, Saint-Etienne, France
Bagarre générale, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Saint-Etienne, France
Déplacement, Ecole Sarah Bernhardt, Montpellier, France

2010
Le Choix d'un collectionneur, Musée Paul Dini, Villefranche sur Saône, France
Programme Libre, Galerie Vasistas, Montpellier, France
ArtPars, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris, France
Chassé Croisé, FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, France

2009
Supervue 009, Hôtel Burrhus, Vaison-la-Romaine, France
ArtElysée, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris, France
Air de Mende, choix d'oeuvres du Languedoc-Roussillon, Mende, France

2008
La dégelée de Rabelais, Galerie Vasistas, Montpellier, France
ArtParis, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris, France

2007
50 artistes de Rhône Alpes, Musée Paul Dini, Villefranche sur Saône, France
Les Elysées de l'Art, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris, France

2006
La Serre, Ecole des Beaux Arts de Saint-Etienne, France
Bagarre Générale, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Saint-Etienne, France


Collections publiques
Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris, France
FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, France
Musée Paul Dini, Villefranche sur Saône, France
2015
The Drawer - vol.8, Le Banquet, March 2015

2014
The Drawer - vol.7, Le rire - la collection Laurent Goumarre, Winter 2014
L'œil et le Cœur 2. Traits d'esprit dans les collections montpelliéraines, 2014

2012
The Fantasy Land. Works by David Wolle, catalogue, Le French May, Macao, 2012

2009
Offshore - oct-nov-déc. 2009, Interview - http://offshore-revue.fr/documents/guarino_21.pdf
LA TRIBUNE LE PROGRÈS - David Wolle, cet artistequi « bricole » la réalité - 2017
LA TRIBUNE LE PROGRÈS - Christelle Lalanne
July 15, 2017
Voir le fichier
LA TRIBUNE LE PROGRÈS - David Wolle - 2017
LA TRIBUNE LE PROGRÈS - Clément Goutelle
June 07, 2017
Voir le fichier
David Wolle - a Expon : Poupeinsky
David Wolle - a Expon : Poupeinsky
July 15, 2017