Démiurge-Rêveur-Conteur
Texte de Coline Deltreil, responsable des collections Art contemporain, Musées d'Annecy
Kevin Lucbert n’oublie pas ses rêves. Il les dessine et se divertit des limites du monde conscient. Tel un démiurge, il invente des espaces, éprouvant ainsi notre propension à percevoir la réalité en nous et loin de nous. Le sommeil paradoxal et ses productions oniriques alimentent la source d’inspiration de l’artiste qui nous ouvre les portes de ses songes et nous invite à survoler les univers qu’il élabore. Kevin Lucbert compose d’étranges et minutieux agencements d’espace, démultiplie les perspectives, unit ellipses et tracés denses sur fond de paysages d’immensité où le prisme de la ligne devient langage. Son œuvre surplombe le visible.
Armé de son stylo à bille capable de parcourir 2km de « pages blanches », il planifie, construit et amplifie des paysages qui se situent quelque part entre le connu et l’inconnu, entre la réalité et l’imaginaire. Les formes organiques de la nature côtoient l’orthogonalité du bâti dans un équilibre surréaliste juste. Kevin Lucbert décloisonne les frontières du dessin et de la peinture, de l’écriture et de l’image. Il nous insuffle une envie irrépressible de gribouiller en rêvant, de détourner l’objet usuel de sa fonction première, de le réinventer en médium de création.
Comme nos rêves, les dessins médiumniques de Kevin Lucbert ont mille et une interprétations possibles. Il confie à ses traits et à ses graphismes la charge de révéler une situation traitant d’une immersion dans son monde intérieur, d’un voyage dans le temps, d’une fuite entre les lignes. Pour un grand nombre de créateurs, peindre c’est transformer ce qu’ils connaissent. Les œuvres de Kevin Lucbert dialoguent avec l’environnement, avec les forces naturelles que sont le soleil, l’eau, la terre et le ciel, propres à déclencher une vision spécifique de l’espace. Psychiques et matériels, ses territoires picturaux revendiquent également l’intégration du savoir actuel aux mythes universels, tels des parcours initiatiques sur lesquels l’artiste nous guide.
Citoyen du monde, Franco-Berlinois, hors territoire - comme les labyrinthes imaginés par Jorge Luis Borgès - son vrai lieu de résidence est ailleurs : dans ses œuvres vouées à une cosmogonie personnelle dont les axes impliquent des horizons affirmés. En dessinant, il fait advenir les formes et les pensées qui l’accompagnent dans ces dédales remplis d’issues vers des territoires inconnus. C’est cet inconnu qui donne un sens à son œuvre. Pour saisir la subtilité de son univers, il est nécessaire de s’immerger dans l’espace qui se trame entre les lignes. Cet ailleurs n’a ni commencement ni fin, mais il crée des mesures au fil des séries, des points de repère, des échanges entre plusieurs dimensions, comme si, à travers leur approche, il nous était offert de devenir les explorateurs de ses lignes colorées, vagabonds de l’univers projeté.
Coline Deltreil
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Demiurge-dreamer-storyteller
Kevin Lucbert does not forget his dreams. He draws them and turns away from the limits of consciousness. Like a demiurge, he invents spaces, testing our propensity to perceive reality within us and far from us. The artist draws inspiration from his REM sleep’s oneiric productions and invites us to fly over the worlds he creates. Kevin Lucbert composes unusual and meticulous organisations of spaces. He multiplies perspectives, uniting ellipses to dense outlines against the backdrop of vast landscapes where lines become part of a language. His work overlooks what is visible.
Armed with his ballpoint pen able to cover 2km of blank pages, he structures, constructs and amplifies landscapes that lie somewhere between the known and the unknown, between reality and imagination. The organic forms of nature mix with the orthogonality of buildings in an accurate surrealistic balance. Kevin Lucbert breaks down the barriers between writing, drawing and painting. He makes us want to scribble while dreaming, to go beyond the primary function of an everyday item, to reinvent it as a creative tool.
Like our dreams, Kevin Lucbert's drawings have a thousand and one possible interpretations. His features and graphics reveal a situation dealing with an immersion in his inner world, a journey through time, a flight between the lines. For many creators, painting means transforming what they know. Kevin Lucbert's works connect with the environment and with the natural forces of sun, water, earth and sky, triggering a specific vision of space. Psychic and material, his pictorial territories also claim the integration of current knowledge into universal myths, just as rites of passage where the artist leads us.
Global citizen, “Franco-Berliner”, off territory - like the labyrinths imagined by Jorge Luis Borgès - his home is elsewhere: in his works, dedicated to a personal cosmogony implying distinct horizons. Kevin Lucbert brings forth the shapes and thoughts that accompany him in these mazes filled with exits to unknown territories. This unknown gives meaning to his work. In order to grasp the subtlety of Lucbert’s works, it is necessary to immerse oneself in the space that weaves between the lines. This elsewhere has neither beginning nor end, but it creates rhythms over the series, points of reference, exchanges between several dimensions, and eventually enables us to become explorers of his coloured lines, wanderers of the projected universe.
Coline Deltreil
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"SUR LES BANCS DE L'ECOLE"
Exhibition "À l'Écu de France" gallery, Viroflay, 2024
Text by Valeria Schubert, Art historian
Kevin Lucbert, who graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs de Paris, has worked in book graphics for many years, both as a creator of bandes dessinées and as an illustrator. Today he collaborates with such famous companies as The New York Times, Hermès or Issey Miyake and, of course, BIC, and is currently involved in the creation of murals for the Champigny Centre station as part of a large project to decorate the new metro stations of the Grand Paris Express system. And all these years, a ballpoint pen remains his primary tool. In an interview published on the gallery's Huberty & Breyne channel he says: "The blue comes from my fascination with the blue Bic, which is the tool we all have around. It was interesting to me to make drawings using a very popular 'simple' tool, and to extend the possibilities of the instrument to bring it into an artistic field." And then he creates a story and invites the spectator to find its continuation. At the exhibition he presented a part of a series he has been working on for ten years - "Blue Lines" and several pieces from the suite "Red Lines".One of the themes that the artist often "discusses" with the observer is the confrontation of two worlds - the rigid graphic city and the fluttering nature. When man is caught in this fight, he finds himself on the side of nature, which literally grows through him. But the subject is not all that can attract the viewer. And Lucbert’s drawings are the pieces of art that one would like to scrutinize to discover more and more details. The image of the city - straight lines, angles, white space crossed out with a geometric grid. Nature is presented as mysterious landscapes with snow-capped mountains and raging sea - as on Japanese prints, lush exotic foliage reminiscent of Persian miniatures, fanciful trees as from Dürers masterpieces and suddenly just outside the doorstep - there is an endless shimmering sky - and I can find no analogies for it, it's just very beautiful. So, finally Nature and the Universe win. The artist often talks in his interviews about dreams, imagination, the unconscious, about subjects that have come to him in his dreams, and we can see a lot of surreal transformations and follow the wanderings of the soul and consciousness. But even in the most dramatic moments there will be nothing frightening, because if this is a dream, it is the one of a person in love with art and speaking its language.The series presented at the exhibition - apart from the subjects - attracts with its mastery. The artist's skill is such that the spectator forgets that it is a drawing with a blue pen on white paper. During his studies he came to appreciate etching, and now this love is evident in his virtuoso mastery of line and stroke. By changing their intensity and character, he creates a sense of vivid movement - of water, foliage, even comets - and makes the white paper turn from the background into a shining sun and sparkling stars. His lines create a pulsating rhythm - it is not by chance that one of his drawings was turned into a music video, and his collaboration with Issey Miyake resulted in probably the lightest and most visionary advert for the famous brand.