Jean-François Noble

“My work is inaccessible, just as art should be.” This principle in the form of a provocative quip does not mean that Jean-François Noble situates his works in some limbo hostile to the ordinary mortal. On the contrary, he is conscious, down to the tips of his brushes and chisels, that he is part of an environment, the many connections of which he will never fully capture despite his gargantuan thirst for knowledge. Art is an elevation, a self-revelatory smokescreen that enables one to shed one’s rational certainties. He chooses the bumpy road and superimposes codes with a mischievous twinkle in his eye; his increasing interest in alchemic symbols has become part of a quest for an unknown that drifts further and further away over the course of his initiation.

Jean-François Noble is curious about everything, receptive to the invisible signs of nature, and nourishes his exacerbated perception with secret conversations with the elements. “The elders talk to the brambles”, my grandfather used to say. J.-F. Noble’s protean and telluric work keeps up this increasingly profound dialogue with the origins of man as much as it opens up a channel toward new generations. […]
While he is open to adding elements of modern visual technology to his series or installations, physical matter is still their fundamental component, in all its forms and metamorphoses. […]
A fluid reconciliation of gesture and thought, his work goes along with the inscrutable pulsation of the universe instead of trying to control it. Good things come to those who know how to receive. “I wait for things to appear.” The right moment, balance in immensity. Jean-François’ “Noble art” is in his image: human but boundless.”

Hervé Brunaux, “Noble cause” (excerpt), 2014
Documeents d'artistes Nouvelle-Aquitaine commission