Denis Pellerin

BYDealers Auction House Biography and Notes

Among collage artists, Denis Pellerin is one who has maintained the practice throughout his career, making it his primary focus. Working in mixed media has literally become a way of thinking for this gifted artist, who transforms all manner of materials - string, canvas, paper, corks, sticks - with equal ease to produce rich and complex compositions. From his series Icônes païennes (1991-95) to Chant brut (2006), by way of Constructions épidermiques (2004-05), Pellerin gradually abandoned figuration to give his materials a body and voice of their own through built-up vertical bands. Passage (1997) still contains traces of the figurative elements that were present in his works of the early 1990s; its iconography liberally borrows the silhouettes, integumentary forms, letterings, washes, strips, and cadastral cuttings seen in his series Faux plans pour une vraie sculpture (1990), Rêve érotique de Lemberk (1990), Courtepointe (1991-92), Icônes païennes, and particularly in his works from 1993. Passage is like a synthesis of Pellerin's career, bestowing the traces, signs, and symbols of his own artistic passage.