Claude Turlan is a painter who uses macrophotography in his creations. He uses the infinitesimally small to express beauty, which arises in almost miraculous ways, often mystical, poetic or revealing. In his studio, he takes macrophotographs (around one square meter) of oil paint drops with myriads of colors laid on a flat surface. The photographer’s intuitive eye frames them according to what he senses to be harmonious shapes and colors. Claude Turlan also works in collaboration with Sabine Langlois’s Atelier Arty Apparel who offers a collection of art to wear, a way of expressing the sublimation of artworks on clothes.
Claude Turlan: I think I fell into a can of paint at birth. During the war – as I am not that young – I had found a 15mm film on the street which featured a series of ships in color, and that was my first emotion triggered by colors. I had another moment – rather unconscious – at kindergarten, where instead of playing with the other kids, I just looked at flowers. And then, chance played a role, as those drops of paint came to me as I was making faux marble. I don’t know what led me to them!
I got the idea of making a few drops of paint with the brush and I immediately saw something interesting that I should photograph. That’s when I first discovered a slightly different world. When the Association Photos Folie in Touraine decided to gather all amateur and professional photographers in the area, I decided to make an exhibition based on those drops of paint. All the exhibitions and paintings that came after that stemmed from this moment.
Indeed, but it gives us insight into another world. Paul Eluard said: “There is another world but it is in this one”. It means that we need to look at things in a different way. I do macrophotography but if I had a microscope, it would be a three-hundred ratio, it would be yet another way of looking at things. And it would be very interesting.
There are several distinct and dissociated steps to this creative process. There’s the quest for the beautiful, for the unexpected, and then come surprisingly representative shapes such as a woman and her child. They’re just part of me, like some sort of continuum, and nothing needs to be altered. Other photographs are not original or powerful enough, so they become indicators, they become the basis of a painting which will lead me somewhere else. They are vessels.
Photography is like a brush that allows me to materialize an idea before creating an artwork. It is the discovery of a combination of colors that chemically attract or repulse each other, that divide or dilute like a riverbed running between two hills. A trickle of paint creates a tree structure, like waves draw trees in the sand when they retreat.
In nature, very few things are unorganized. One could think that those drops of paint are completely random, but they are not! They react as if they were directed by a law that is, in itself, beautiful.
Yes, it’s the same base, but they are still dissociated. I overlay two images: one is the main theme, the other acts as a developer, a revealing image. From a banal but constructed photograph, the artwork reveals itself, thanks to a background which gives it a soul.
Yes! I’ve never done black and white photography.
No, I admit that black and white can be extraordinary, but only when it is perfect. I’m not interested in a photograph that does not have enough character. I’ve never done any black painting.
He has found the force that reveals light. Black occurs when the matter has absorbed all the colors, while white occurs when the matter reflects all the colors. Soulages has found some sort of dynamic painting. When you move in front of one of his large format paintings, the light changes as you move around. Soulages works with thickness! I also like to work with thickness. I am a bit of a potter, I love pugging with my hands rather than with a brush, I love directly touching the materials!
No, because I work in a very basic, primal way. I lay the colors and I look. It’s more like work to me. It is so difficult to paint something! You never know where it will take you and it takes a lot of energy. Often, I can only tell that I’ve done something good through the eyes of others. That’s when I get another look at what I did and feel more convinced.
I am more tempted by photography than by painting, because photography provides quick results.
I cannot imagine anything else than a spirit behind the creation of our world. No matter how you call it, the world cannot have been created without any mistake, without any variation for thousand years – it cannot be mere coincidence. When I see miracles happen in my photographs, I think that there might be no need for me to paint, and that I should keep looking… We need to learn how to look properly, instead of imagining what we see.
Interview by Barbara Sensey
Amboise
Do you want to be kept informed of Maison Sensey’s brand new material?
Here is our newsletter.
