Electric Muses, Quinacridone Flowers & Other Addictions

Cyril Olanier

jaggedart is delighted to present our first solo exhibition by French artist Cyril Olanier.

The initial response to Cyril Olanier's painting is an admiration of their virtuoso beauty, the perfect technique. Layer upon layer of paint is lovingly applied, veiling the underlying almost photographic image.

The images range from a rose in full, sumptuous bloom, to the female face, often with head tilted back, face glowing. The sensual, the erotic, shine through the paint, one is seduced and also romanced by the world within Olanier's canvases.

As the French critic Jean-Charles Vergne wrote: "At first glance, things look fairly simple. Cyril Olanier's paintings allow themselves to be grasped visually and intellectually - and why not sexually - with simple clarity. First, the themes tackled by the artist are recurrent. They echo each other in long series giving the whole set of paintings a peculiar beat, a pulse lacking apparent arrhythmia. Roses together with landscapes coexist with women's face, either glowing with the ecstasy of sexual climax or looking more serene, with their eyes wide open, or even asleep. Nothing too spectacular actually, except the initial surprise caused by the erotic icons… The style too seems to be marked with certain obviousness, dragging in its wake the inevitable historical references, the alleged influence and inheritance which underlie Cyril Olanier's works. But one knows for sure that you should be wary of allegedly obvious styles. The obvious is more often than not an ideal ploy. As Marcel Proust noted: the most apparently accessible styles are often the most elusive ones. Thus, Cyril Olanier's works offer themselves to the onlooker through elaborate seduction stratagems (offering roses is part of them) which clearly enough possess a dark side. The artist's paintings are both strange and appealing."

Olanier was born in St.Brieuc, France in 1966 and studied at L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Le Mans and Nantes. Between 1998 and 2004 taught painting at the Beaux Arts of Strasbourg and Toulouse.

He started exhibiting in the early 1990's. Since then he has had over 40 shows internationally. His UK debut was in 1999 at the BCA Gallery in Cork Street.