Ludovic is a French artist living in Budapest. He works mainly with paintings and for 2 years he started associating paintings with installation and objects. The main thematic of his work for the past 5 years has been around Childhood. He explores this life period, its contrasts, emotions, transitions and passions, that reflect our conditions of human beings.
Short statement about his actual works
His painting is like an accumulation of experiences, images and ideas; a mixture that he organizes in a simple chaotic way. When describing his work, he likes to talk about collage, superimposition of elements that tell stories. These stories are fluctuating between reality, fairytales and surrealism; on the canvas abstract brush strokes mix with figuration coming to build up these compositions.
Life appears as an oxymoron, a romantic contradiction creating a fragile balance which defines our thinking and deciding systems. This same game and system belongs to his process of creation and research.
The nature and plants are a natural force; the discovery of Brazil and its forest emphasized the use of plants in his work. In a kind of magic, trees and plants find their way of perfect visual balance. Ludovic likes to see his paintings growing in this organic way and borrows some pieces of Mother Nature for his creations.
Antique pictures are often a base for his work. He delocalizes these images and make an interesting timeless proposition.
Hungarian embroideries are an imprint of his own story, but also a powerful symbolic of culture and knowledge transmission between generations. Each region of Hungary had its own codes and drawings which were improving and passing from one generation to another. These drawings were exhibited on pieces of fabric; he uses it as a bridge between generations that erodes with time.
Animals are used in almost all fairy tales. They are the friends of our little ones and their imaginary stories. They also have a very strong symbolic presence of guidance in many cultures.
Transition
Ludovic Thiriez’s paintings tell a story in a similar way to a fairytale where the spectator can imagine a new plot. The Prologue series suggests going back to your childhood using memories and imagination.
Thiriez’s pictures explore a strange and fantastic world. He amalgamates some European and tropical plants, few animals from the forest, Hungarian symbols and some abstract gestures. In the same way as the ivy on the wall, all these motifs grow organically on the canvas creating a balanced composition. The desolate background depicts an obscure and intriguing ambiance with neutral and austere colours contrasting with the agitated and vibrant world on the foreground.
Currently in residence in São Paulo, Thiriez adds more Brazilian flora in his paintings. He alternates between figurative elements and more graphic and geometric designs working in sequence between a meticulous and slapdash technique.
In parallel of theses ambiance’s works, Thiriez paints portraits of young children from the past. The naive kids’ faces look deep at your soul wondering about their life. They have hopes or fears about their future. Thiriez incorporates again Hungarian motifs to emphasize the passage to the adult age. The embroideries symbolize the bridge between stages of life where knowledge and culture are passed on to the next generation.
Thiriez creates a patchwork form his life experiences and influences. Born in France, he lived many years in Budapest where he got the inspiration from the Hungarian textile patterns. This is an old woman selling her own embroideries on a Budapest market who told Thiriez the story behind the different shapes and colours. According to her, Hungarian women created specific embroideries long time ago passed it through the generation adding their own experience. They were looking at the Nature and copied forms from trees, flowers and other vegetal life. Hungarian embroiders created cloths with their own meaning and a specific code for their family depending on the region where they lived. That story shortly resumed here had a great impact on Thiriez who recurrently applies those motifs in his work and continues his researches.
Thiriez’s work (Prologue) shows a duality between old and new, traditional and contemporary, obscure and colourful. Born in a generation where the technology has appeared in a sudden and has changed the society erasing slowly a conventional model of life, Thiriez looks at the folklore and the wildlife to get the wisdom to question the conventional values in the present-day. He recreates his own model starting from what he knows from the past and what he gained from the present creating a transition between generations.
Antoinette Godin
A long text about my work written by the collector, art critique and president of the Luxembourg art price: https://www.artcritic.com/en/ludovic-thiriez-painting-the-suspended-moment/
Um respiro
Um respiro incomum, ao mesmo tempo familiar. Deslocamento de tempo e espaço. Lembranças do nosso passado, quando nossa mãe nos contava estórias na tentativa incansável de nos fazer sonhar, mas que muitas vezes causavam medo e uma certa dose de melancolia.
Tal qual personagens de um conto, elementos simbólicos provenientes das influências culturais dos locais em que o artista francês morou -França, Suíça, Hungria e Brasil- formam o elo que é passado através das gerações. No mundo contemporâneo, saturado de imagens sem procedências determinadas, a herança cultural imagética passa a ter grande valor. É justamente este elo que nos aproxima de suas narrativas.
Os símbolos utilizados interagem-se e confundem-se, formando imagens que nos convidam a um mergulho em busca de algo que um dia fez parte de nós, por meio dos contos de fadas que ouvimos, da nossa imaginação guardada ou mesmo através do inconsciente coletivo que permeia diferentes culturas. Tudo isso se mescla a sensação ambígua de não sabermos, muitas vezes, o que seus personagens misteriosos estão pensando, mas ao mesmo tempo nos identificarmos com eles.
As crianças são doces e encantadas, contudo, capazes de realizar malignas travessuras. Os animais, plantas e bordados húngaros, se contrapõem com o fundo obscuro, denunciando o paradoxo da natureza humana, do bem e do mal.
Influenciado pela literatura, o trabalho de Ludovic Thiriez é um Prólogo de uma estória ainda não inventada. A começar pelos fundos cinzas, existem lacunas poéticas onde o artista compartilha elementos da estória nos guiando a lembrar, imaginar, pensar e criar infinitas vezes.
Sua obra revela portanto, características inerentes e essenciais à arte: a capacidade de refletir o que está ao redor, de nos fazer refletir, mas, principalmente, a ambiguidade somada ao poder de nos levar para tão perto e tão longe daqui, de contar uma velha nova estória, de ser atemporal. Como diria Marcel Proust : “A memória se expande num tempo que toma conta de todo o espaço”.
Carolina Isaac
Curriculum
Training
* 2007: Fine art School of Budapest, Painting program
* 2002-2007: ESSCA, Ecole Superieure des sciences commerciales d’Angers
* 1992-2002: Private Schools for drawing and paintings.
Group exhibitions
*2025 Karlsruhe, with Rodler Geschwenter
*2024 Parallel Vienna, with Rodler Geschwenter
*2024 Arte padova, with Gare 82, Italy
*2024 Art Verona, italy
*2024 Expoarte, Montichiari, Italy
*2024 Bergamo Arte Fiera, Italy
*2023, charles diehl, Avignon, France
*2023 ArtUp, Lille, France
*2023 Art Verona, Verona, Italy
*2022 collective art shortlist, Paris, France
*2022 Art Verona, Verona, Italy
*2021 Art Verona, Verona, Italy
*2021 ArtMarket, Budapest, Hungary
*2021 Waldhaus contemporary, Flims, Switzerland
*2021 Galleria Ipercubo at Federico Luger, Milan, Italy
*2020 ArtVerona, Verona, Italy
*2019 Art Fair, Art Verona, with Gare 82 Gallery, Italy
*2019 « Bizarre » currated by Bojar Ivan Andras, Loft b111, Budapest, Hungary
*2018 Luxembourg art prize, pinacothèque of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
*2018 Art Fair, Art Market Budapest, with Brody house collection, Hungary
*2017 Mixed realities, Bernheimer contemporary, Berlin,
*2017 « White wall », J+ gallery, New york
*2016 Karlsruhe art Fair, Germany, with Bernheimer contemporary
*2016 « when did we stop playing 2? » Kremers Gallery, Berlin
*2016 « When did we stop playing ? » Bernheimer contemporary and Anna Laudel, Istanbul
*2016 Miami, collector’s dinner
*2016 Art fair, Art Market Budapest
* 2016 Leonard Tourné Gallery, New York
* 2013/2014 : Residency and exhibition at the Art club Tofiq House in Sao Paulo
* 2013 : Group talks and exhibitions at Ateliê Hermes,
directed by Nino Cais and Carla Chaim, Sao Paulo
* 2012/2013: Foire Européenne d’art contemporain, Strasbourg, St –Art galerie Boyrié
* 2012 : Lisabird am Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna, curated by Lisa Kandelhofer
* 2011: Permanent exhibition at Brody House
* 2010-11: Vienna, Art collective, Lisabird
* 2008: Exhibition :Salon off de la photographie contemporaine, ateliers Richelieu Paris
Personnal exhibitions
*2023, Galerie deux6, Paris, France
*2022 Galerie Sechzig, Feldkirch, Austria
*2021: Felix Hoeller, « My fairy nature », Vienna, Austria
*2020/2022/2023/2025: Gare 82, Brescia, Italy
* 2018: Playground, Bernheimer contemporary, Berlin, Germany
* 2015: Brody Art Yard, “portrait project” with Rogerio Mesquita
* 2014: Centro Cultural Octo Marques, « Prologuo », Goiania Brazil
* 2012: Héviz Museum
* 2010: Budapest, French institute June-September 2010/ Retrospective of 2 years in Budapest
* 2009: Brody House (permanent exhibition)
* 2008 (10 May): Gödör. Event exhibition: „Euromed”.
* 2008: Paris Show room galery Griesmar Tamer.
Prizes in Art contests and other
* 2008: exhibition Drouot Montaigne, Paris and creation of a quotation
* 2008: Catalogue Millon et Associés edition 2009.
* 2014: FFW MAG Brazil
*2018: Laureate at the luxembourg art Prize , jury : Anne-Claudie Coric managing director of Templon gallery, Olivier Donat director of the Museums of Paris, Isabelle de Maison Rouge curator and art historian, Olivier duvivier curator of the Pissarro and Tavet-Delavour Museum, adriano Picinati di Torcello Director of the Art & Finance Department, Deloitte Consulting
*2023 : interview for the french art journal “pratique des arts” n 168
Private collections
France, UK, US, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Portugal, Turkey, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Australia