Portrait de Gaspar Willmann

Gaspar Willmann

Gaspar Willmann is a young French artist whose work was exhibited in May 2022 at the Studio des Acacias for the first group show of Reiffers Art Initiatives, entitled “DES CORPS LIBRES – Une jeune scène française”. He considers his paintings as photo-montages. First retouched on Photoshop, then with oil paint on printed canvas, his creations intertwine his own photos and others, found randomly on the Internet.

JUMAP (re_united in flames)

Gaspar Willmann, 2022

JUMAP (Une raison d'aimer)

Gaspar Willmann, 2020

JUMAP (Sunset 2)

Gaspar Willmann, 2020

JUMAP (HDmaines)

Gaspar Willmann, 2020

JUMAP (caresse)

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

View of the exhibition "Dans des yeux clos, il n'entre pas de mouche" at the Exo-Exo gallery

Gaspar Willmann, 2022

View of the exhibition "Dans des yeux clos, il n'entre pas de mouche" at the Exo-Exo gallery

Gaspar Willmann, 2022

JUMAP (Edelweiss)

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

JUMAP (Until a new one comes along)

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

JUMAP (bonne année)

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

JUMAP (VSL)

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

Exhibition view at Art-O-Rama

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

Heure dorée (view of the exhibition "La vie normale" at the Exo-Exo gallery)

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

JUMAP (even by phone)

Gaspar Willmann, 2021

JUMAP (contagion) (view of the exhibition "DES CORPS LIBRES - Une jeune scène française" at the Studio des Acacias)

Gaspar Willmann, 2020

Biography

Graduating from the Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 2019, Gaspar Willmann considers his paintings as photomontages.
Critical heir of the post-Internet movement, the young artist reopens the question of reproduced and found images, their mediation and circulation in a technocratic society that acts on affects.
In his work, he creates a new form, a new body, by mixing the nostalgia of the traditional still life with the banal language of contemporary society. The artist is represented by Exo Exo, Paris.

Texts

“Gaspar Willmann, the artist who digests the images of the post-internet world” by Ingrid Luquet-Gad
— Numéro, 2021

“When Gaspar Willmann, from the time that is his, and ours, reopens the question of reproduced and found images, their mediation and their circulation, he does so as a critical heir to the post-Internet movement whose corpse was left for dead the day after the 9th Berlin Biennale, in 2016. Times have changed, suffering bodies are reminded of the digital utopia that wanted to dissolve them, and eyes are opened to the structural inequalities endorsed by algorithmic rationality . If the artist, who graduated in 2019 from the Beaux-Arts de Lyon, poses as the heir of Seth Price and Artie Vierkant, it is nevertheless impossible for him to celebrate them: the “object images” of the second, which served as a manifesto ( The Image Object Post-Internet published on several sites) to post-Internet art, in 2010, operating a permanent back and forth between sculpture and its modified exhibition view, are depressing because they open the infinite abyss under our feet nothingness. During his first years of study, Willmann undertakes a job of painting which does not satisfy him: what interest, so much effort to reproduce what already exists, and which will only lead most of the time to its circulation. self-gratifying on social networks? He then opted for video in found footage... too smooth, too empty, before finding his tactic: parasitize each other to break the surface, smear the smooth, bring out the affect."

“Gaspar Willmann : the little death” by Antoine Champenois
— ARTAIS Art Contemporaine, 2020

“Beyond the particular stories that Gaspar Willmann creates by recomposing them, it is a story of the circulation and transformation of images that he tells in his creative process. In his computer runs a photoshop file that manipulates a database like so many virtual stories, not so much in the common sense today of their digital existence but rather in the sense of their current or realized potential for existence. This virtual function of the images is precisely the one questioned by the subjectless figurations, activated by the artist in the video and by the viewer's imagination.

“La petite mort” thus designates both the technical dimension of the artist’s work, which brings a finished story to the canvas, and the intimate and emotional relationship that triggers this advent. The video and its painted correspondences then become so many subjective anchor points from which, by rapprochement or empathic detachment, we take the time to think about our own relationship to reality in a world in loss of truths."