On canvas, he divides the body of his models into the heavenly bodies which he associates in polyptyques, representing the solar system, making them gravitate around the spectator, who becomes the central point. His giant monochrome nudes are designed to dominate and compromise the illusion of security. A Chinese proverb states that "God invented the cat so that man could stroke the tiger". Or, could it be said that: "God invented woman so that painters could represent the universe".
For a period of twenty years, Jean-François Comte was a talented director of advertising films, admired by his peers and respected by all. In his interest as well as ours, all of this had to end. He at last came back to the world of real artists by a path well known to him: white surfaces, long shots, close-ups and enlargements. Beneath the eyelids of the film maker has been dozing for some time the eye of the painter, who sees and shows the authentic, the familiar and the pleasures of life. Undeniably, this particular "Comte" resembles a "Grand Duke", a sort of bird of good omen with round pupils and a magicians gaze who sees clearly at night.
He looks at women with the eyes of an artisit. He loves them in the same way as he loves children and in the manner that ogres love: intensely...
Jean-François played truant from school so as to force parental permission to study ancient Greek. Followed a course at the Centre dEtudes de Radio-Télévision, département du service de la recherche de lORTF. As a film director in London during the 1960s, he designed story-boards, made advertising films and begun his first paintings. For the French TV channel, FR3, he co-ordinated a television series on Roman art, wrote and directed a documentary on the tympans and the chapiteaux of the basilicas of Autun and Vezelay. It was at this moment that he discovered the prowess of roman masons.
On becoming familiar with the principles of the "golden number", he enlarged the field of his pictorial research to the reasoned fragmentation of the human body and its projection in space. In 1998, he created his first triptyques which were exposed at the festival of Rabastens in the shadow of Françis Bacon and Buren, in this way marking the initial stage towards his final metamorphosis as a sculptor on canvas.
For further information :
http://www.artsiteweb.com/31accueil.htm
1999
OCDE, Annexe Monaco, Paris
2000
grands nus panoramiques, Fondation Taylor, Paris
2001
travelling à latelier, Hotel-galerie de lAtelier, Villeneuve lez Avignon
2002
peintures, Atelier Lecoq, Saint Rémy de Provence.
femmes en trois D, Cluny
femmes-univers, Mairie, Châteauroux
2004
château de cartes, Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture, Corbeil
métamorphoses, Orangerie de la Mothe Saint Héray
2005
femmes-univers. LOrangerie, Centre culturel, Roissy en France
êtranges ou la vie sexuelle du Saint Esprit, Chapelle Ste Anne, Tours
château de cartes, Chapelle de la citadelle, Blaye
2006
retour à lorigine, Galerie Garcia-Laporte, Paris
eve, cette inconnue qui enfanta lunivers, Mediathèque, Margny
2007
château de cartes, galerie Garcia-Laporte, Paris
And...
open art, Atelier Grognard, Rueil-Malmaison.
14 septembre-15 octobre
Ar(t) Cheval, Saumur.
27 octobre-11 novembre