Michaël
Raivard
Visual Artist · Studio in Serralongue, France
At the threshold
of the image.
PRÉSENCE is less concerned with what an image shows than with the conditions through which it appears, resists, erodes or disappears. The human figure forms through fragments: it surfaces beneath successive layers, withdraws and returns.
Coverings, drips, abrasions and revisions inscribe several states of the image within each painting. The canvas becomes a palimpsest; what has been covered continues to act beneath what remains visible.
Between the slow time of accumulation and the brief instant of emergence, painting becomes an experience of memory, perception and the persistence of forms.
Seuil I · 2026A continuity
of gesture.
Trained in applied arts in Paris, Michaël Raivard has developed an international artistic practice over approximately fifteen years. He created LIVE Gluing in 2007 and became known for images revealed before an audience.
With PRÉSENCE, the studio becomes the site of a slower temporality. The image is built, covered, scratched, buried and resumed. The question remains: what makes an image emerge, and what persists when it begins to disappear?
Contexts
- 2026PRÉSENCE · Galerie B612, Maussane-les-Alpilles, France
- —ARTE · Erik Satie project, Honfleur, France
- —Mandela Rhodes Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
- —Womanity Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland
- —Premios MARCA, Barcelona, Spain
- —International presentations in Monaco, Oxford and Costa Navarino
Selected contexts from the artist’s earlier painting and performance practice.