Jean-Michel Cordier conceives painting as an instinctive language, a space of tension between what drives him internally and his perception of reality. His work is permeated by a quest: that of authenticity of gesture, sensory memory, and pictorial vibration.
His painting is gestural, physical, constructed in layers, scrapings, successive coverings, until he lets go. Each work becomes a place of exploration, a raw territory where the body expresses itself before the mind.
Deeply inspired by primitive arts, he uses masks, totems, and ritual figures not as decorative motifs, but as living symbols. These elements embody an ancestral memory, a silent spirituality, a relationship to the sacred and to transmission.
His series such as “Dandys,” “Masks,” and “Portraits – Primitive Arts” question notions of identity, cultural mixing, and human presence. Through them, he constructs a personal visual language, at the frontier between Art Brut, Expressionism, and emotional abstraction.
For Jean-Michel Cordier, painting is a vital act, a way of inhabiting the world with sincerity, strength, and openness.
