Christian Lhopital

Christian Lhopital's work openly plays with the codes of representation in art. The series of drawings we are presenting focuses on one or more frames on a wall. There is therefore a kind of mise en abyme, where the drawing represents the zero degree of art: a white wall with an empty frame. But on closer inspection, we quickly discover that this emptiness is an illusion. Each work reveals a thousand details, from the texture of a wall from which a few ghostly figures seem to emerge to the false transparency of colors that veil as much as they reveal. Nothing is staged here. The off-screen space conditions the composition. The space within the space, the window within the window, the frame of the drawing revealing other frames are therefore nothing more than mental projections that openly question the nature of art, what it delivers and reveals. What it masks and hides as well. It is therefore not surprising that the abstract rubs shoulders with the figurative. This clever blurring also extends to scale, both that of the work, which is sometimes small, sometimes larger, and that of the relationships between forms and figures. The monumental is not a question of dimensions but rather of a disjunction between a figure and its environment.

Works presented by the gallery :

1- Indices et traces, 2024
Pencil, watercolor, and ink on paper
45 × 70cm

2- Indices et traces, 2024
Pencil, watercolor, and ink on paper
35 × 50 cm

3- Indices et traces 40, 2025
Pencil, graphite, and acrylic on paper
48 x 85,5cm

4- Espaces troubles 08, 2023
Pencil, graphite, and acrylic on paper
45 × 50 cm

5- Myriade 04, 2024
Pencil, graphite, and acrylic on paper
65 x 50cm

6- Christian Lhopital
Photo de l’atelier, Lyon, 2026