CHLOE SAI BREIL-DUPONT
Name: Chloë Saï Breil-Dupont
Age: 32
Birthplace: Paris, France
Home: Berlin, Germany
Discipline: Painting
A turning point, 2022
What’s usually the starting point of your practice, and when does your work feel complete?
My practice begins with an encounter, by a fire inside, in the belly; a very strong desire. All the paintings are created by a kind of wonder and admiration for the people I paint. Also, for me, life is an in!nite investigation and painting is part of this movement. A work is complete when I intuitively feel it is, when I can touch the texture of the flesh with my eyes.
What are you obsessed with?
To be honest, I am not obsessive. But I have a form of radicality in what I like or what attracts me. I love gestures, words, things that are honest and right. Everything that surrounds me and that constitutes my painting is fundamentally about that. Besides, I think a lot about our heritage and collective memory, about the ghosts that constitute us and surround us. My painting is very much infused by this.
What are the interactions that you seek between your work and the viewer?
The relationship drawn between the work and the viewer is perhaps the most important thing, as intimate and subtle as it can be. The people in my paintings are looking in front of them. But in fact, they are watching you. I paint the glances in a way that they are following the viewer wherever they are in the room. It’s important to me that the person who enters the room is somehow as important as the paintings. I paint these pictures to emphasize the preciousness of the individuals I decide to represent. Moreover, it’s important to me that the people who look at my works feel precious too. For me, this sweetness starts by making people feel seen and considered.
What is your commitment, both artistically and personally?
As I said before, kindness and taking care of the people around me are, in a way, my biggest commitment. Moreover, all these people reflect the world and its possible futures. There is a form of fight and creativity in their life, because of their personal history and their convictions. We share this and it is certainly the thing that has become our bond.
Who are some of the artists that have been the biggest influence
on you?
As I think visions, lives and ways of acting inspire me, I’m not going to mention only artists: Mary Shelley, Tracey Emin, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Emil Ferris, Hedy Lamarr, bell hooks, Domenico Gnoli, Agnolo Bronzino, Kathy Acker, Caravaggio, David Lynch, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Katsuhirotomo, Marguerite Duras, Facteur Cheval, Francis Bacon, Lautréamont, Aby Warburg. Most of all, my biggest influence are my friends. I will name two of my artists friends, Thomias Ludovic Radin and Lukas Luzius Leichtle, with whom I grow up through our discussions about life and painting.
Where is the beauty for you today?
Beauty is what is so right. It is the right gesture, the right shape. I am not talking about what is right according to the established rules and guidelines. The rightness is felt in the belly and operates an appeal. Beauty is where there are desire and life impulses. Sometimes it is driving fast, dancing for hours, a storm in a heatwave, a perfume of a stranger in the street, or a look, a speech, a way of speaking, a deployed laugh. Sometimes it is a painting.