Claude Guenard

Born in France in 1949, Claude Guénard, a graduate of the Fine-Arts School in Paris, is a painter, engraver and sculptor. Completely committed to everything he undertakes, this artist is well on his way to living the proverbial nine lives. He took part in boxing matches, competed in judo, hunted in the brush and taught in art schools in Africa for 20 years. Nicknamed the "cultural mercenary", he now lives and works in the Paris area.

Joyous, playful and erotic, his creation abounds in generosity and warmth. He shows love and death in his paintings, drawings and sculpture, depicts them and transforms them. Fully and permanently connected to his works, he creates an imaginary world peopled with a host of characters. In his research, the pictorial and the thematic are totally wedded. The symbols consequently acquire a plasticity, a materiality, even become an incarnation. Hence the terms 'form', 'gesture' and 'matter' become synonyms for character, adventure and universe. We then enter a world that laughs at its paradoxes, a libertine but tender, violent but generous world of feigned obscenity, feigned because, in truth, it is playful.
Claude Guénard like to provoke, but always with humor and derision.

Claude Guenard has chosen an approach that blurs the border between reality and representation, leading the spectator into an erotic universe in which imagination is the principal driver. Conventions, morality and fantasy are taken for what they are: mental constructions. Claude Guénard invests a space that lies between the expression of a fantasy and its concrete realization.

"I use the razor, a blade that caresses the skin and alters the flesh and I take use it to mercilessly tease the support. The models displayed in luxury catalogues never have anything against being subjected to the outrages of drawing and the engraved line. I undress them with the razor by scraping the printing with malice and desire. Then the drawing is driven wild. I topple the values of representation and I create an interaction between the words, the drawing and the model. I whole-heartedly abuse the voyeurism of art buffs who only think about loving my drawings."

Many group exhibitions with Arman, César, Combas, Chamizo, Hybert, Ben, Hervé di Rosa in Paris (Navara and 51 rue de Seine galleries, the Paul Ricard Foundation, the Museum of La Halle Saint-Pierre, etc.), the Le Rire Bleu gallery in Figeac, Lyons and Monaco, as well as abroad in London, Ottawa, Abidjan, Ho Chi Minh City, etc.
Solo exhibitions at the Trafic, Jacques Barbier and Le Monde de l'Art galleries, La Maison de l'Hérault, the Museum of Eroticism, as well as abroad.
Recent exhibitions in Mexico: the Pinacoteca Diego Rivera in Xalapa, the Galeria Regia in Monterrey and in Querétaro and Mexico City.

Exhibition at Slick, the contemporary art fair and at the Contemporary Design Show in Paris in 2006 and 2007.