Florent CHAVOUET Là-bas vu d'ici

Florent Chavouet is not an easy artist to pigeonhole. With his pencils sharpened and his eyes peeled, this Japanophile sets off in search of material to draw, ready to whisk the viewer from sketchbook to cartoon strip, from caricatures alive with schoolboy humour to the precise marks made by a map maker.  

For his very first exhibition, “Là-bas vu d’ici”, no passport or backpack was needed ... Instead, Florent Chavouet elected to work within the four walls of his studio in central France and let Japan come to him. With his paper firmly placed on his desk but his mind still free to wander…  The result – more than 40 new drawings that hover between misty memories and nocturnal fantasies.

Japan and Florent Chavouet – a chance encounter that would give rise, in 2009, to Tokyo Sanpo, published in more than a dozen different countries. In this hybrid travel journal, the artist takes his time, settling down to observe the tiniest details of life in Japan’s vibrant capital. A label on a piece of fruit, a mayonnaise brand, an asphalt landscape, the veins on a leaf fallen from its branch… Nothing escapes Florent Chavoux’s eager pencils. He observes closely and sketches what he sees – the day-to-day life of Tokyo, its strangeness, its uniqueness.

A year later, it was a more intimate vision of Japan that Chavouet was drawing – Manabeshima, an island within an island, the epitome of insularity, or the hidden face of Japan, the number of coloured pencils in Florent Chavouet’s pencil case matched by the number of inhabitants in this village of fishermen (some 200). The artist stayed on Manabeshima for two months.  On foot, by boat or by bicycle, he travelled around the island, working and reworking his drawings, which regularly served as a means of communication with the locals. As in the case of Tokyo Sanpo, his choice of technique was based on practical concerns. Sturdy and taking up very little space, his colour crayons could travel with him wherever he went and proved equally useful whether accompanying his sketchpad or perched on the corner of a table between bottles of shochu and glasses of saké.

For this, his first, exhibition, Chavouet plays around with formats, freed from the technical constraints imposed by either a book or a physical journey. As a result, he can approach each page differently, horizontally on a corner of his desk or vertically, up against his bay windows, when his drawing table becomes too small. Deprived of the opportunity for a physical journey, but not deprived of movement, for “Là-bas vu d’ici”, Florent Chavouet varies his position and his physical gestures. In the sanctuary of his studio, the artist can reach for his inks and his watercolours, combining them with his talent for using colour pencils. He plays with transparencies, and with textures, switching between busy drawings and drawings that are pared back, between the point of his pencil making furrows in the paper and the subtle, barely-there touch of his brush diluting ink and making colour sing.

OPENING
Friday 15 December 2023, from 6.00 pm to 9.00 pm, in the presence of the artist
Saké tasting (courtesy of Brasserie Chevalier)

RECEPTION AND BOOK SIGNING
Saturday 16 December 2023
4.00 pm : opportunity to meet Vincent, creator of artisan teas (Kodama)
5.00 pm : tea tasting and book signing (Éditions Picquier)

EXHIBITION
From Saturday 16 December to Saturday 27 January 2024

PARIS | Chapon
19 - 21 Rue Chapon 75003 Paris
Wednesday > Saturday 13h30-19h