Pierre Auville, One Dimanche, Mixed Media, 2013

One Dimanche (Abstract painting) Pigmented cement on foam panels. Unframed. Auville works with construction cement. Applying techniques used in the construction and ship building industries, he spreads the cement over Ursalite (high-density foam panels), creating pieces ranging in size from one to eight square meters. One Dimanche is an abstract landscape or urban skyline, made of soft pigmented cement. Its material absorb the brightness of the pigments and paintings which have been poured into it. It isn’t a simple mix, but rather a digestion of colours by material. Pierre Auville is a French artist whose work investigates and incorporates the aesthetic and conceptual qualities of manufactured materials such as cement, concrete and steel. He was born in Le Havre, on the Normandy coast, and lives and works near Paris. Auville explored many different fields before turning full time to art. He worked as a journalist, served in the French Navy, worked in emergency medical services and held various management positions in industrial companies. He worked around a lot of different kinds of manufactured materials and surfaces, which inspired him. As his artwork evolved he experimented with different mediums, exploring various kinds of alternative media until he discovered the rawness and versatility of cement. Cement allows Auville to search for the point where the colors of human-made materials go back to their original mineral essence. He references the various color qualities of minerals in stone, ranging from Lascaux cave in France, which he visited as a kid, to cement roads in hot areas such as California, to the abandoned WW2 “blockhaus” that line the Atlantic coastline of Western Europe. Pictorially, Auville’s aesthetic vocabulary is influenced by modern art movements such as Geometrical Abstraction, Arte Povera and Street Art.