André Léocat

Following his acclaimed contribution to an exhibition at the invitation of the Finistère Group, André Léocat was subsequently invited by Suzanne Pagé to the Ateliers de l’Arc in 1981, where he showed wall reliefs. Since then, the artist has been working in a constant flux, involving bursts and ensembles, favouring in his compositions an “equilibrium between the relations of lines and right- angled plans”. Mondrian specified that: “The new (abstract) vision does not start out from a determined point; it establishes the viewpoint everywhere without any fixed determination”. This statement might define not only Léocat’s works, but also his work process. He proceeds in a thoroughly free manner, passing from abstraction to figuration. The artist’s painting favours not a plurality of prisms, where a single gaze tends to be duplicated by way of an intermediary element, but a whole host of planes, where different simultaneous visions co-exist. It is in fact impossible for the onlooker to observe André Léocat’s works with one and the same conception of painting. His works call for a mental agility in order to shift from one to the other, and call upon the viewers to turn their backs on an overly polarized approach.
Excerpt from the essay by Karen Tanguy