Djamel Tatah
Born in 1959 in Saint-Chamond (France).
Lives and works in Provence.

I had wanted to work with Djamel Tatah for years, in large part because I knew he was a “monomaniac” who worked strictly in oil on canvas – no works on paper, not even sketches or studies. I loved the idea of taking him somewhere new, finding a solution to recreate the subtle complexity of the flat colour areas in his paintings on paper. One of our first works, a woodcut shown at the Pompidou Center, was a life-size portrait of a melancholy figure, head down, hands in his pockets. We made simple, monochromatic shapes by printing layer after layer in different hues that, with the imperfections in the wood grain, seemed to vibrate with an inner luminosity.