In Damien Cabanes’s work, the motif is never an end in itself. Long committed to abstract painting based solely on the relationship between color and matter, the artist has retained from this period a fundamental conviction: the subject is a pretext, the painting itself is the true text. However, his encounter with the living world—human figures, animals, landscapes—reveals to him that no presence is neutral. Painting thus implies a direct confrontation with reality. Damien Cabanes always works from life, in close physical and temporal proximity to what he observes. Landscapes, flocks, chickens in motion, flowers, or dogs are captured in the urgency of an appearance, not to be described, but to seize their vital energy. This vitalism permeates his entire oeuvre. While the experience is immediate, the process is rigorous. Panoramic formats, gouache painting on thick paper, working flat and with lateral movement inscribe the body and time within the image. Animal figures are reduced to signs, landscapes unfold in sensitive curves, flowers are organized into colorful, almost musical rhythms.

Neither a realist nor a naturalist, Damien Cabanes paints the fleeting intensity of observation, and his work composes a vast ode to the world, where tradition and modernity converge in the intensity of a captured moment. _ Guided tours on Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m.

Open

Friday to sunday from 2pm to 7pm

Art Contemporain en Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes

15 bis, chemin de l’Abbaye

Annecy-le-Vieux

74940 Annecy