Mathieu Piffeteau

Mathieu Piffeteau’s abstract paintings explore the diffusion of light through an original technique of pictorial fragmentation, inviting the viewer to pure aesthetic contemplation.

Work on light and optical illusions

‘Light is the very essence of painting. I don’t think there’s a painter who doesn’t paint light. All my work focuses on light.’ Mathieu Piffeteau

Born of phenomenological research into light, far removed from any symbolic aspect or meaning, the French artist’s approach is fundamentally sensory. His aim is to create an illusion of light through the interaction of the viewer’s eye with the geometric shapes and gradations of colour that merge harmoniously and skilfully on the canvas. His work is closely related to and inspired by Op Art, Light and Space (particularly the work of James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson), Minimalism and geometric abstraction.

The result is a mesmerising work, giving off a vibratory, kinetic energy that invites almost meditative contemplation. Each observer’s perception of optical effects is personal and subjective. The artist wants to evoke a sensation, offering visual pleasure: ‘I want people to arrive in front of the canvas and find it just beautiful. Not asking themselves any questions, just admiring what they’re looking at, wanting to stop and look. Maybe there’s no political significance, no intellectual representation… but isn’t it more important to feel something?’

The technique of pictorial fragmentation, original and laborious

The process of creating a work begins with preparatory drawings, to fix the idea on paper. The artist explains that he often finds the ideas for his works when, lying in bed with his eyes closed, he lets himself be guided by the halos of light that appear behind his eyelids. He then reproduces the grid of simple geometric shapes (squares, circles, triangles, etc.) on the canvas and starts painting from the centre or the lightest part. Mathieu Piffeteau favours oil paint because it reflects light and gives off vibrations that he particularly appreciates. To maximise the diffusion of light across the work, the artist developed a singular, slow and precise process: he fragments or pixellates the paint by painting stroke by stroke, square after square, line after line, always with the same brush. The squares are all different, but the human eye perceives an apparently perfect pattern.

Finally, each line corresponds to a different shade of colour, perceptible or not, in a creative process that Mathieu Piffeteau likens to reading a book: ‘It’s like telling a story, it’s as if you were turning the pages of a book each time, as if each line were a page’. The artist uses two techniques in particular to ‘give rhythm’ to his gradation and modify the intensity of the light: a short gradation, which creates a visual effect of luminous ‘blur’, and a long gradation, which creates a visual effect of luminous radiance. This meticulous technique demands a great deal of patience: it can take several weeks or even months to complete a painting. For Mathieu Piffeteau, the repetition of gesture and the time spent on the work help to give it meaning.

Painting for Mathieu Piffeteau: inspiration, outlet, research, work

Mathieu Piffeteau was born in Nantes in 1982 to a surrealist painter mother and a topographer father. Certain family visits to museums had a profound effect on the young artist: he marvelled at the imaginative power of Salvador Dalí at the theatre-museum in Figueras and was amazed by the incredible optical illusions of Victor Vasarely at the eponymous Foundation in Aix-en-Provence. At the same time, he admired the perfection of his father’s drawings at home, developing his own taste for precision and geometry. The shapes on which his canvases are based are now created with the compasses and rulers of his topographer father.

Mathieu Piffeteau has been a self-taught painter since the age of 20. However, his work at the time had nothing in common with today’s: figurative, rapid and instinctive, it was an outlet for his feelings about injustice and violence in society. After completing a master’s degree in sociology, he moved to Australia to live in the Aboriginal community of Wugularr (Beswick). There, he took part in the production of works that were halfway between art and craft, and he was marked by this extremely repetitive and time-consuming traditional painting, subject to strict codes. Back in France, he moved to Biarritz to pursue his passion for surfing and worked in the construction industry as a rope access technician. Following an accident at work in 2018, he decided to devote himself to painting and joined a collective studio.

A feeling of powerlessness and frustration in the face of the problems of our world led him to abandon figurative representation. Mathieu Piffeteau became interested in light and optical effects, subjects on which he would later focus his artistic research. Motivated by a strong desire to exhibit his contemporary paintings in a public place, he prepared a very ambitious personal project to show his works in the Sainte-Eugénie crypt in Biarritz. Four years later, in 2023, he inaugurated his first solo exhibition with 53 canvases of various sizes created especially for the spaces of this fascinating venue. Between gallery exhibitions and increasingly immersive installation projects, the contemporary painter continues to question the role of the artist, his relationship with the observer, and the impact of our culture and society on contemporary art.

‘Art is the only area where we really have freedom. The artist and the observer can feel whatever they want, and that’s extremely important.’ Mathieu Piffeteau