Artistic approach
My works are generated through a reflection on space, light and form. Color as light and space as form. Lately I am interested in the reflections of color on various surfaces, such as metals or cement. I am also drifting towards a work, although structured, increasingly organic.
My work is summarized in recovering remains of lost sensations and trying to seal them in a painting or sculpture. Fix them. A truth that has nothing to do with specific definitions, but with perceptions. In this task of capturing dreams there are also accidents, of which many artists speak. It’s true. Not everything is calculated, accidents are what lead us to new paths in which to enter and sometimes find ourselves.
In the 80s and 90s my work was fundamentally figurative. It was through a two-year job in which I only painted a table and three chairs against the light that my painting reached a point where it no longer required concrete forms. It undressed to only focus on the essentials, the light and the limits on the surface. This coincided with a time when I gave painting classes to children, who with total freedom entered the realms of the unconscious without any fear or shame.
Technically I have started in a classic way, but later, and for many years with alkyd resins, using brooms, and lately with acrylics and pigments, also with industrial brooms.
The sculptures are made first in paper and later in aluminum or steel, supported by cement on wood and pigments. My sculptures derive directly from my pictorial work, in which defined elements already existed combined with more ephemeral and organic elements of color.
My artistic references are diverse, but I have identified for years with post-constructivism, abstract expressionism and the Support-Surfaces movement, although my figurative base always forces me to reinforce the compositional and balance part.
Gordon Matta Clark and Anish Kapoor are two great references for me.
“Yvan Mas’s work is defined by his textured paintings, with colored surfaces delimited by structures that create an atmosphere of depth. It is inspired by the HAKUGINHI or number of money (Japan), which would tend to approach a certain spirituality and perfection of forms. He discovers the emotional force that geometric shapes can transmit without giving up the color and light that are essential to him. The gesture, always in relation or in conflict with a delimited surface, is the strength of this artist’s work ”.Ph. Lelong