Discover the contemporary work of Lionel Le Jeune

https://lionel-le-jeune.com

A native of Paris, it is now under the light of Provence that Lionel le Jeune flourishes artistically, after having lived in Italy where his creative sensitivity was revealed... A multidisciplinary artist, he stands out for the expressiveness of his sculptures, his original oil compositions or his minimalist pop art photos. A remarkable work to several titles.
On the one hand, modeling, sculpting, assembling clay as well as plaster, driftwood, but also old metals, leaves, fabrics etc. recovered or found in nature, allow him a very great creativity and expressiveness. He creates characters, animals, totems or scenes inspired by history, mythology... Themes and style sometimes close to an Alberto Giacometti or Marc Petit. But primitive art, even Celtic art (its Breton origins perhaps...) can be sources of inspiration to which he feels close. his paintings - where the certainty of the profession can be discerned - On the other hand, this approach, finding in oil on canvas, ink and watercolor its techniques and its favorite pictorial supports, which extend traditional genres (nudes, still lifes, portraits, urban landscapes or genre scenes) nevertheless offers a powerfully original approach. The Younger, in fact, cannot resolve himself to the laborious work of the copyist. An affirmed artistic personality, he displays high plastic ambitions. He seeks to identify, behind the shifting appearances of the sensible world, the permanence of an intelligible order; thus bringing to mind Edward Hopper, De Chirico, Giacometti or Balthus, his beloved predecessors. Just like them, on the basis of a classical culture constituted by the assiduous frequentation of museums, he elaborates his own pictorial language to elevate, in turn, our daily universe to aesthetic dignity. In this, the urban genre scenes that he depicts say enough about the coherence of his approach and the success of his enterprise. A seasoned designer, Le Jeune enjoys rigorous compositions, describing collective habitats at the foot of which passers-by and marginal people gather. Then freezing his protagonists in attitudes that are a priori innocuous, Le Jeune gives them a presence that is henceforth enigmatic. The solitude of each being that an exchange of glances never manages to break, further reinforces this meditative atmosphere. From our urban universe where the trivial seems to compete with the ugly and the futile, the painter extracts what will nourish his vision of a timeless and aesthetic world. Thus his portraits of combatants of modern wars whose overwhelming expressiveness struggles with time and history. Heir to this classical pictorial tradition that he admires so much, Le Jeune extends it with his singular talent, to bring to his environment the sharp gaze of someone who manages to go beyond the realm of appearances. His creations are present in numerous collections in Europe and around the world.

https://lionel-le-jeune.com

A self-taught artist, Lionel Le Jeune has achieved a remarkable mastery of pictorial technique while expressing himself in an original language, thanks also to the study of art history, not at all insensitive to the lesson of the masters, the Italian Primitives in particular.
Treating ex professo the traditional genres of painting, Le Jeune also strikes us with through his style and the harmonious blend of his colors.
Like the shadows that wander through urban scenes, the elements of his still lifes are as many characters frozen in the middle of an action, as for a family photo. With a surprising result: the still lifes appear to us as scenes of life.
With a sensitivity and a look that allow him to capture sometimes ordinary moments by making them unique, Le Jeune, with his works, leaves the spectator with difficulty indifferent: his scenes of life move us, make us feel uneasy. ease, capture us with their perceptible background of sadness that does not arise from the isolation of the characters but from their solitude.
The action remains timeless and to the questions relating to the protagonists of his paintings: "Where do they come from? Where will they go once they leave the stage?" An answer is obvious: "Nowhere, no doubt." The action during the time of a look, it is neither in the past, nor in the present, nor less in the future, but in the imaginary world that he has created.
A. M                   Curator of Cultural Property