Nicolas Cluzel

Painting

Nicolas Cluzel is 34 years old. He was born in Angers and grew up in Tournon sur Rhône (France). After spending 10 years in Lyon, he is now working and living in Isère.

In 2010, Nicolas Cluzel obtained a Master’s degree in Plastic Arts from the University of Provence Aix-Marseille.
Since then, he has exhibited all around France and abroad. His work is regularly presented in galleries (Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Yvoire, Marciac, Tours, Madrid, Montreal), salons (Lyon, Paris, Le Mans, Cherbourg, Troyes, Lausanne), art centres (Levallois, Fresnes) and museums (Brussels, Le Mans, Tournon sur Rhône).
His paintings can be found in private collections in France, Europe and the United States, as well as in public collections such as for the cities of Pont-de-Claix and Levallois-Perret. His work is endorsed by the Art Actuel press such as « Artension » and « Miroir de l’Art » magazines and has received the 2021 Taylor Prize, the Prize of the Jury 2020 of the Lyon Art Paper exhibition and the 2019 LeLivredart Prize.
Critics such as Louis Doucet (president of MAC PARIS), Christian Noorbergen (philosopher) and Ileana Cornea (Artension) have commented on his work. In January and February 2020, the city of Levallois-Perret invited Nicolas Cluzel to present eighty paintings in a retrospective exhibition in its art centre L’Escale.

Nicolas Cluzel is a painter who works in series. Recently, three main approaches have emerged: still life, the borrowing of major works from the history of painting and the “social fact”. Often, these series are intertwined. They take shape in a desire to express a view of the times, and are part of the same tragi-comic conception of existence.

The narrative aspect is at the heart of the painter’s work. How to stage his era while avoiding the pitfall of the message, of the “clear and distinct” illustration, of the anecdotal? The simultaneous presence in his pictorial work space – or, from one painting to another – of symbols, their confrontation, their association, aims at creating different possible readings and leads to interpretation. The narrative, if any, seems to be manifold and unrestricted.

There is certainly a denunciation of the world, a social critique and a rebellion in Nicolas Cluzel’s paintings. But above all there is a desire to paint. A will to restore reality by shattering it, by shaping it into a painting. The themes addressed are embodied in his pictorial expressiveness, they are inextricably linked to it, and strive to alert the viewer to the urgent issues facing our societies.