ART-PRESENTATION: Stéphane Dafflon

Stéphane Dafflon’s paintings are simple at first glance, strangely smooth, however perfectly mastered. Made of geometric and abstract shapes with sharp contours and primary colors, his artworks question first by their effective sobriety. Then, when getting closer, shapes blur, some angles become round and some points progressively unravel. Stéphane Dafflon distorts the line, shifts the alignment, granting a vibratory power to his canvases, which resonates within the space where it is situated.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle

With Stéphane Dafflon’s fresco “PM070” by, Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle (MBAL) is starting a new series of semi-permanent exhibitions created in situ. Dafflon is one of a number of Swiss artists commissioned by MBAL to create a unique work of art tailored to the museum’s architecture. “PM070” is therefore the first of a series to be featured on the walls of MBAL café, which, visible from outside the building, create a visual link with the public. Created on a computer to begin with and then transposed to a canvas or wall, Stéphane Dafflon’s pictorial work is always designed with a specific place or architecture in mind. It is incorporated within his work and his actions change the audience’s perception of it, visually and physically. The long chromatic variation of shades displayed in Stéphane Dafflon’s wall installation brings an impression of movement to the different areas at le plateau and feelings experienced by visitors reflect a certain affinity with the world of music. Stéphane Dafflon has also been creating Abstract sculptural works for several years, not restricting himself to paint. Different materials such as wood, translucent Plexiglas and stainless steel are used to produce these three-dimensional works. Painted or shimmering, these 3D objects echo the shapes of the paintings hung on the walls causing reflections, interacting with the surroundings and opening the space out to unexpected perspectives. These transformed spaces create uninhibited visual rhythmics (originating in and detached from the pictorial theories of Max Bill in particular), combining objects, paintings and drawings with wall stickers that communicate with each another like multiple perspectives with painstakingly chosen and calibrated colors emphasising a graphic dimension with the architecture. Through this visual assemblage of painting, sculpture, object and architecture, Stéphane Dafflon’s work portrays an original and radical vision of abstract painting, painting in the broad sense, conceived beyond media deemed as traditional such as a canvas and its frame to instigate a spatial and colourful conversation positioning the viewer at the heart of a veritable pictorial arrangement.

Info: Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Rue Marie-Anne-Calame 6, Le Locle, Switzerland, Duration: 3/11/18-27/1/19, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.mbal.ch