09.22.2022-11.20.2022
JAN VOSS
tours et détours
Galerie Sonia Zannettacci is pleased to present Jan Voss - tours et détours, an exhibition combining paintings on canvas and recent collages with a group of ceramics made between 1991 and 2011.
Jan Voss was born in 1936 in Hamburg. After studying at the Munich School of Fine Arts, he arrived in Paris in 1960 and settled there. His first solo exhibition in Paris took place in 1963 at the Mathias Fels gallery. In 1964 he participated in "Mythologies quotidiennes", at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, then in 1965 in "La Figuration Narrative dans l'art contemporain", Galerie Creuze, exhibitions organized by Gérald Gassiot-Talabot.
Unlike his comrades in « La Figuration Narrative », Jan Voss never used advertising iconography. He first populated his canvases with signs, objects, characters and drawn animals, offering us the possibility of constructing all kinds of stories. These figures, like tightrope walkers, stood on threads criss-crossing the canvas horizontally or vertically. Over time, the threads have faded, the silhouettes that occupy the painting have become less explicit and shapes painted, cut out and pasted on the canvas have punctuated the space to the point of sometimes bordering on abstraction.
“The painting, says Jan Voss, is an addition of forms – drawn, painted, cut out, etc. {…} who will enter into relationship with each other simply because of their proximity, or by a common fortune, or in response from one to the other”
Not repeating himself, taking advantage of the surprises that his scissors reveal to him, letting his brushes move freely on the canvas are the only imperatives that Jan Voss obeys for, whatever the medium (painting, collage, engraving, watercolour or ceramics), taking us to an unexpected world, full of joyful surprises.
Image
Jan VOSS
38 Petites têtes, céramique, 2020