Guillaume Bottazzi's artist studio
Oil paint is a paint whose binder or medium is a drying oil that completely envelops the particles of pigment.
Considered in the West as the queen of pictorial techniques, it boasts remarkable robustness; paintings that have been on continuous display for five hundred years and more are still in good condition. The formulation of oil paints affects the ease of application and the appearance of the finished work, and is adapted to the work envisaged. Pigments and fillers determine the opacity or transparency of the dry film of paint; the media laid on the canvas give it a more or less liquid or pasty consistency, and this in turn influences its surface appearance.
This film is a performance. Guillaume Bottazzi creates his painting live, from the first touches on the canvas to the finished picture.
“The immersive tools provided by abstract art allow Guillaume Bottazzi to create ethereal shapes that, as if they were steam, are blurred and blended with the surface. ”The support is an integral part of the piece and gives off the idea of infinity” the painter says. To exemplify this, it suffices to look at the role of light, which crosses through the frames that delimits and contains each painting.”
Juan Paolo Casado, Bachelor of Hispanic Literature – Arte Al Limite – June 2017
“Guillaume Bottazzi occasionally forsakes canvas for a gentler, even a silkier textile, pulled taught and whose red colour serves him as a background.
Like Matisse, he has understood that a fabric’s texture has the ability to radiate and create the impression of infinite space. At this point, he hasn’t yet picked up a brush. This living surface is not a “background”, a wall in relation to which the form will become a relief, a weight. Guillaume Bottazzi will lay down traces of colour, often white, always pale, as though the essential concern is to retain the breath in the gesture. His hand is directed more in a caress than a movement. It works slowly, precisely. Bubbles form, seeds or cells, or yet again comma form and swell from a trembling void, slowly rising to the top of the composition. Sometimes whiteness is achieved with a light drift of plaster. Sometimes a glaze of oil colour is deposited on the surface. Often chromaticism is restricted to the definition of an outline, as Western painters used to do when representing a tear, or a drop of water. These works without titles invite the spectator on a spiritual voyage.”
Guy Gilsoul, art critic and writer
“[..] curved contours could be preferred because they seem less harmful, or plain and simply because they are inherently attractive . The idea that curvature is an aesthetic primitive confirms philosophers’ claims since the 18th century. Burke, for instance, believed that beauty is smooth, without edges or sharp angles. In this respect, Guillaume Bottazzi’s work exemplifies the use of these basic features, which elicit pleasure automatically, probably unconsciously, and are attractive to the eye. Like many artists, he intuitively applies these principles and produces visual doses of sensory pleasure.”
Helmut Leder and Marcos Nadal, Faculty of Psychology of the University of Vienna – Text extracted from the study “Curved art in the real world: A psychological look at the art of Guillaume Bottazzi”
