Biography :

Born in 1973 Frédéric Clot lives and works in Ependes (Switzerland).

Frédéric Clot's paintings claim a subject for painting and drawing to represent—they do not choose to represent, for example, the real life of everyday society, or the portrait of living human beings, or the idioms of commercial mass media, or even the medium of painting itself. Strange as it sounds, Clot’s paintings and drawings claim as their subject the surface of the digital image; more precisely, they claim as their subject the digital image’s historical drive toward naturalism, its desire to escape its own artifice (ones and zeros, little blocks visibly arranged in grids). It’s the same drive, we might argue, that motivated European painting well into the nineteenth century, and which ended in the salons of academic realism, just as photography was arriving to relieve such realism of its responsibilities.

Ironically, today’s high-resolution image culture shares with nineteenth-century academic painting the same anxiety over resolution. In academic painting, technique was supposed to make the brushstroke invisible. Today, it is the pixel that wants to disappear, enabling the image to become a pure image, its components indistinguishable to the retina; which is to say, something that approaches the status of something close to the experience of reality. So Clot is working backward through history, recalling the evolution of the digital image. In low resolution, desaturated, full of grids and degraded curves, crawling with broken ideograms, Clot’s paintings and drawings make for paintings that are paradoxically entangled with the culture and technology they subtly critique. Handmade surfaces of pigment and graphite, Clot’s representations of archaic digital images made of pixels are to be looked at as material things. But they will also, inevitably, be reproduced, by digital imaging, in high resolution and in 24-bit color, on our screens—screens that become carriers of a consciousness of their own troubled claim to the perfect representation. (1)

His work has been exhibited at institutions such as:

 Jenisch museum in Vevey (2021-2008), CACY (KAKI) in Yverdon-les-Bains (2020), MBK in Sachseln (2020), Rath museum in Geneva (2019), MAHN in Neuchâtel (2019-2014), Museo Villa dei Cedri in Bellinzona (2019), Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds (2016, 2013), Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice (2015), Lieu Unique in Nantes (2014), Espace Arlaud in Lausanne (2011-2007), Contemporary Art Space FORDE in Geneva (2004). His work has been exhibited at the following international fairs: artbasel, Art Paris, artgenève, art brussels, Contemporary Drawing Art Fair (Paris).

Public and private collections (selection) :

 Private collection, New York, USA / Private collection, San Diego, USA / Private collection, Berlin, Germany / Francisca and Vincent Juillerat collection, Paris - Valparaiso, France - Chile / Bustros private collection, Paris, France / Private collections, Switzerland / Jenisch Museum collection, Vevey, Switzerland / Credit Suisse collection, Zurich, Switzerland / F. Hoffmann – La Roche collection, Basel, Switzerland / Crossinvest SA collection, Lugano, Switzerland / MAH collection, Geneva, Switzerland / Museum of Fine Arts La Chaux-de Fond collection, donation François Ditesheim, Switzerland / Cantonal Prints Cabinet collection, Vevey, Switzerland / MAHN collection, Neuchâtel, Switzerland / CHUV collection, Lausanne, Switzerland / Collection of the City of Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland / Collection of the City of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

(1). JJ Charlesworth (excerpt from "Paint and pixel" in DIGITAL. Berlin, Hatje Cantz, 2024)

Biographie:

Musée Jenisch à Vevey (2021-2008), CACY (KAKI) à Yverdon-les-Bains (2020), MBK à Sachseln (2020), Musée Rath à Genève (2019), MAHN à Neuchâtel (2019-2014), Museo Villa dei Cedri à Bellinzone (2019), Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Chaux-de-Fonds (2016, 2013), Fondation Giorgio Cini à Venise (2015), Lieu Unique à Nantes (2014), Espace Arlaud à Lausanne (2011-2007), Espace d’Art Contemporain FORDE à Genève (2004). Son travail a été exposé au sein des salons internationaux suivants : artbasel, Art Paris, artgenève, art Brussels, Contemporary Drawing Art Fair (Paris).

Collections publiques et privées (sélection) :

Collection privée, New York, USA / Collection privée, San Diego, USA / Collection privée, Berlin, Allemagne / Collection Francisca et Vincent Juillerat, Paris- Valparaiso, France - Chili / Collection privée Bustros, Paris, France / Collections privées, Suisse / Collection du Musée Jenisch, Vevey, Suisse / Collection Crédit Suisse, Zurich, Suisse / Collection F. Hoffmann – La Roche, Bâle, Suisse / Collection Crossinvest SA, Lugano, Suisse / Collection MAH, Genève, Suisse / Collection du Musée des Beaux – Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds, donation François Ditesheim, Suisse / Collection MAHN, Neuchâtel, Suisse / Collection du Cabinet cantonal des estampes, Vevey, Suisse / Collection CHUV, Lausanne, Suisse / Collection de la ville de Neuchâtel, Suisse / Collection de la Ville d’Yverdon-les-Bains, Suisse

(1). JJ Charlesworth (extrait de"Paint and pixel"dans DIGITAL. Berlin Hatje Cantz, 2024)

« Donation François Ditesheim », MAHN, Neuchâtel-catalog