Fabrice Clapiés: “Geo-graphique”
Fabrice Clapiés is a French artist, born in 1974, who works in Bordeaux as an architect. He attended the Grenoble Architect School and spent one year in Montréal’s Québec. Clapiés has a tumblr page where he publishes all his works
The Origins of the Artist’s work
The beginning of his artistic career happened almost by chance. He started drawing maps during a phone conversation, as a mechanism of repetition. The painting itself grew from a very geometric pattern and the result was mainly an abstract pattern, but accidentally it looked like a city map.
For the artist it’s like a game, transforming sheets of paper in cartography: sometimes he is inspired by real city and sometimes he creates urban fixtures.
Rigidity and Fluidity
The artist, who is also an architect, manages to combine in his works his two natures the most fluid and creative and the most rigid and schematic. The great challenge of watercolor is the absence of correction, nothing can be erased. Once the line is laid, it is impossible to go back. Watercolor also brings lightness and speed that collage, colored pencil or computer graphics software can’t reach.
His works are unique because he can mix this two distant worlds: the watercolor tecnique and the architectural project. The result is the creation of these beautiful maps in which he delevops the repetition of a multitude of geometric elements, the clutter of the parcels, the urban sprawl.
Transforming Cities
As the artist himself says his cities are fluid and moving, as living organisms, They do not remain in defined grids but they move around. All of his cities, even though originating from the artist’s creativity, maintain a plausible and well-defined appearance.
“My main claim is to remember that we are a crowd, ants, occupying and transforming a territory gradually.”
Fabrice Clapiés
References:
Featured Image: Ville couchée sur papier formant huit croix blanches ou huit vides géométriques by Frabice Clapiés
