Fire, source of life and light, and the interlacing principle of creation are the "tools" that constitute the practice of Christian Jaccard, for whom the stakes are the representation of time. After having studied at the School of Fine Arts of Bourges, he disrupts the classical or traditional act of painting. Free from stretcher bars, the canvas is printed on by using what he calls tools: natural objects (plants and insects), paper, ribbon, from 1971 onwards he uses ropes, string, knots. These tools replace the paintbrush to produce traces on the canvas. Around 1973, he begins a series of burned works. Initially there are combustions on free canvas, then from 1979 to 1981, he starts a series of burnings of which the support is nothing other than anonymous paintings of previous centuries—portraits, religious scenes—or more recent cinema advertising banners. The combustion attacks certain parts of the image and leaves others increasingly visible. A stay in Italy in 1984 leads to the birth of "the emitted red" (Le Rouge Emis), followed in 1989 by "burnings" (Brûlis) and proliferation of gnarled textures called "supranodal concept" (Concept Supranodal) that he develops during the 1990s. Since 2000, he often works outdoors, in the industrial wilderness, where the problematic of the painting emancipates itself, and the studio becomes a nomad and ephemeral laboratory.

His work has been exhibited at institutions such as Musée de Picardie in Amiens, Musée-château in Annecy, Abbaye Saint André Centre d’art contemporain in Meymac.

Courtesy of Galerie Valerie Bach