Artists

Gyan Panchal

Press release

"The surest — also the quickest — way to awake the sense of wonder in ourselves is to look intently, undeterred, at a single object. Suddenly, miraculously, it will reveal itself as something we have never seen before." Cesare Pavese, Dialogues with Leucò, trans. William Weaver, 1965 "Artists or anyone else, alone, cannot change the world, but they choose to be part of the changing world." Lucy R. Lippard, 'Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power,' in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, ed. Brian Wallis, 1984 CB: In Baleine [Whale] by Paul Gadenne, this short story from 1949 that Gyan Panchal introduced me to, the encounter between a couple—Pierre and Odile—and the animal seems to lead to a form of relinquishment of the subjective gaze we habitually cast upon the person we love. As the whale is looked at, it gradually slips out of every category, every role we assign to others in order to recognize them: it can no longer be reduced to what we ask it to be. It is a transcendent presence, a matter returning to the world, with no need for external confirmation. It is what will resonate with the couple, and more particularly with Odile: a solitude without fear. This story makes me think of what Gyan Panchal reveals through the objects he chooses, partly from recycling and reuse centres, where they are found 'cooked by the sun,' paler than ever. In his studio, Gyan applies measured gestures to them: first, he considers them, then washes them, before proceeding with more insistent gestures—cutting them, wearing them down again, combining them with other objects, sometimes repainting them—without ever seeking to erase what constitutes them or return them to an earlier state. Nor does Gyan seek to enhance their brilliance. In his work, colour seems instead to challenge the eloquence of words, and makes me think of that sentence by Huysmans describing a red softened to the point of resembling raspberry jam soaked up by bread. What interests me in this story, and what brings me back to Gyan's work, is perhaps less the whale itself than what it does to the gaze. Perhaps this is where Paul Gadenne and Gyan Panchal meet: in the acceptance that we cannot understand everything, and in this circulation of gazes that teaches us that before seeking to interpret the world, perhaps we should simply remain before what is, or before what, in the other, remains irreducible. IA: In our recent conversations, Gyan spoke of his wish to "place the object at the threshold of itself," which resonates with the idea of taking the time to look and suspending our desire for immediate interpretation. The question of the threshold has been central to his practice for several years: his exhibition at MAMC+ in Saint-Étienne, and the monograph that accompanied it in 2019, were both entitled At the Threshold of Oneself [Au seuil de soi]. To remain at the threshold of a person or an object: does this risk making oneself ghost-like, or does it instead mean finding an economy of being, close to a form of contemporary asceticism that might be the only sustainable one? I have never heard Gyan speak of ecology in the strict sense, and although our conversations are often political, they most often pass through the prism of the economy of life and labour. This is how his exhibition at the gallery, la soustraite [the removed], should be understood. This feminine adjective, turned into a noun, which I read as the title of a Gothic novel, also more simply expresses the result of withdrawal as a method. To work on a found object by undoing its original use: by fading, cutting, repainting, wearing it down again, then combining it with another object, only to eventually break that union and find it a new one. I have seen objects waiting—sometimes for years—in Gyan's studio. They were waiting for the right moment, the right combination, the right gesture, the right fading. The temporality the artist gives himself runs counter to the speed of consumption, of working with artificial intelligence, of the extractivist race. This is how Gyan and Marcelle Alix have always understood one another: through the choice of a singular rhythm that acknowledges demands without yielding to them. To be at the threshold of oneself, to work up to the threshold of the object, is to find the strategies, the techniques of the self that allow us to distinguish and become conscious of limits. Gyan's sculptural and pictorial practice engages new sensory associations that stop at the edge of abstraction. Like an echo of our heightened awareness that, today, it is no longer possible to abstract ourselves from the consequences of our ways of living. Gyan Panchal was born in 1973 and lives in Eymoutiers (Limousin, France). A graduate of the Jan Van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL), his work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at Angle centre d'art contemporain, Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux; Treignac Project; and Alea–Artagon, Pantin (2025–2026); as well as at the Musée départemental d'art contemporain de Rochechouart, France (2017), and Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, India (2018, 2015, 2012). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris; FRAC Île-de-France, Les Réserves, Romainville; Kunstverein Braunschweig, DE; Musée Zadkine, Paris; and Crédac, centre d'art contemporain, Ivry-sur-Seine. In 2019, MAMC+—Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne—presented a solo exhibition of his work, accompanied by a monographic publication (Snoeck). His works are held in prestigious collections, including those of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; CNAP (Centre national des arts plastiques); MNAM–Centre Pompidou; FRAC Île-de-France; MAMC+, Saint-Étienne; FRAC Artothèque Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Limoges; FRAC MECA, Bordeaux; Musée d'art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Rochechouart; FRAC Pays de la Loire; FRAC Normandie; and Lafayette Anticipations. Warmest thanks to: Georges Ayrault, Clotilde Beautru, Chloé Gourmanel, Chloé Poulain.