The gallery is pleased to show a new exhibition of works by Frédéric Poincelet.
His drawings are figurative without being narrative and are clouded in mystery; some scenes may seem strange. The title of the exhibition, ‘Le Satan’ (Satan) stresses this incongruity while no incarnation of evil is truly present in the works.
With a strong taste for esoteric signs—when the artist includes them in his compositions—he is more interested in the temptation of the creator, that of the effects of style or the insidious influences of the trend during a period of the hegemony of figurative painting. But Frédéric Poincelet is now showing works with a formidable balance in the drawing—still with a ballpoint pen and in ink wash colouring—that find their subjects and deliver the artist’s desires. Thus by invoking Satan he revokes him.

« Imagine that the name  Frédéric Poincelet should be lost one day following a major computer failure leading to the disappearance of all the sites and library catalogues.
The drawings that would surely remain would then make it necessary to make what we call a name of commodity, as do art historians when archives are lacking to provide us with the identity of an artist whose several strong works show his importance.
There is a name that I have always dreamed of : the master of small points, an artist in Ingres’ circle who drew views of Rome using a language full of subtlety, playing precisely on points to draw lines. Frédéric Poincelet would thus be the master of parallel lines or the master of tightly close lines.
Whether they are made with a Bic pen to shape shadows on a lawn or halftones on a body, or cushions on a sofa, the lines immediately set a rhythm that is both poetic and rigorous. But we would almost forget this formal language when we look at the scenes in Frédéric Poincelet’s images, half light in which sleeping or dreaming figures have taken position. »

François-René Martin
Teacher of History of Art,
École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, École du Louvre.
Coordinator of the Research Centre at the École du Louvre.