Support-Surface
The ongoing exhibition at the gallery and the showcasing of Kees van de Wal's work inspired me to write a few lines about an artistic movement I greatly admire: Support/Surface.
The Support/Surface movement was born in France in the late 1960s, in a context of reevaluating traditional artistic principles. Formed by a group of artists mainly from southern France, such as Claude Viallat, Louis Cane, Daniel Dezeuze, and Patrick Saytour, this movement is distinguished by its radical approach to painting and its desire to rethink the materiality of the artwork. The very name of the group, "Support/Surface," refers to the two fundamental elements of painting: the support (the canvas) and the surface (the paint applied to it).
At the heart of their approach is a deconstruction of pictorial conventions: the artists of this movement set aside the traditional idea of the painting as a sacred object, bearer of a representation or a narrative. Instead, they focus on the material components of the artwork. They often eliminate the frame and deconstruct the canvas, cutting it, folding it, or hanging it freely. The paintings are no longer stretched over a rigid frame but sometimes simply hung or placed on the floor, highlighting their physical nature and structure.
Influenced by movements such as American minimalism and deconstruction theory, Support/Surface also shares affinities with conceptual art. This movement stands as a reaction to the excesses of figuration and lyrical abstraction of previous decades. The artists of Support/Surface question the role of the artist's gesture, and painting often becomes a mechanical and repetitive process, devoid of any narrative or psychological pretension.
For example, Claude Viallat is famous for his repeated imprints on unstretched canvases, often cut or colored with textile dyes. His works, almost textile-like in their materiality, evoke a painting stripped of any illusion of depth or representation. Similarly, Daniel Dezeuze explores the structure of the support by creating works from unconventional materials such as metal grids or nets, replacing the canvas with open, minimal structures.
The Support/Surface movement also has an important theoretical dimension, with the artists being heavily involved in critical reflection around their work. The journal Peinture, Cahiers théoriques, founded in 1971, served as a platform for the dissemination of their ideas and manifestos. Art was no longer just a matter of producing objects but became a place of thought, an intellectual field of experimentation where notions of perception, language, and materiality were questioned.
Although the group disbanded in the early 1970s, the legacy of Support/Surface remains very present in contemporary art. Their explorations of materiality and gesture continue to inspire many artists, and their critical approach to the art object remains a major point of reference in contemporary painting discourse.
