JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUBREUIL

Born in Tours, France, in 1946

Lives and works in Paris.

Since the mid-1970s, Jean-François Dubreuil's work has been based on a system defined once and for all: his paintings would be transcriptions of news articles. Starting from this principle, all his works are transfers onto canvas of the surfaces of printed information media: national, regional or foreign dailies (of which he treats either the front page or the entire newspaper), newsmagazines (of which he treats the entirety).

The logic of the series prevails, even if the series comprises only a single item. Examples of series include: all national daily newspapers for the same day, the same title over several consecutive days, the same newspaper processed multiple times according to different criteria or using different page layout matrices… The scale and page layout are determined by the format and number of pages of the newspaper(s) in the series and/or by the chosen frame format.

From the outset, a basic color scheme was established: red for advertisements, black for photographs, and gray or white for anything not indicated by the other colors. Additional colors could be added to this basic scheme, and in such cases, their number would be determined by the newspapers and the analytical framework chosen for the series. For example, front-page spaces that are referenced within the newspaper and the corresponding editorial sections could each be highlighted with a different color. The order in which these colors appear was then determined randomly. These constraints eliminated the choice of composition (which is dictated by the newspaper's structure) and disregarded any rules regarding color proximity. In an effort to remain rooted in its time, the designer added a temporal constraint to these formal limitations: each series is identified by a code whose ascending order follows the chronological order of the newspapers. Freely accepted, these constraints, by making him renounce most of the attributes of the painter, allow him to question painting in the most objective way possible.