Olivier Nottellet’s drawings are black masses that collapse, bounce back, diffract themselves, open up and explode. They represent a complete slightly unhinged and tottering grammar, where characters sometimes emerge with black heads cluttered with objects, precarious constructions and empty frames piled up and displaced. 

The drawings first occupy the pages of the artist’s notebooks which he produces and exploits like material for a future adaptation. As actors of an upcoming story taking place in the space of the exhibition, they migrate from the notebooks to confront themselves with the reality of the walls. Escaping from their two-dimensional space, they produce the dialogue of their combined and fleeting presence: their appearance only lasts for the duration of the exhibition.

Nottellet’s work is filled with anthropomorphic elements and manufactured objects similar to clues : wheelchairs, desk lamps and tables, evoking open space, administrative buildings and the impersonal spaces of the work environment. The objects that peacefully colonize his work ressemble his drawings so much that it is impossible to know which came first.  

Olivier Nottellet’s work is situated in the unclear oscillation between appearance and disappearance. The forms persist by their reminiscence beyond the visible. They sharpen the gaze without authority; they narrate a plot without conclusion nor episodes and drag in their wake a nostalgic collapse, an explosive melancholy: a phantom army that we follow with our eyes to the crossing of horizon, ever out of our reach.

— Text by Claire Guezengar

Olivier Nottellet was born in 1963 in Algiers. He lives and works in Lyon, France

His work has been exhibited in international galleries and museums, such as: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseille, France; Contemporary Art Center, Grenoble, France; Museum of Contemporary Art, Nice, France; Museum of Art and Design, Paris, France; envoy enterprises, New York, NY; Raid Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Centre d’édition contemporaine, Genève, Switzerland; MANIFESTA 4, Frankfurt / Main, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, Saarbrück, Germany and the Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil.