Un grain de moutarde

Un grain de moutarde – Guillaume Dégé, born in 1967, is undoubtedly part of the constellation of graphic artists who participate in a specific trend in contemporary drawing. From the field of illustration, he has kept the principle of economy of the page and the drawing. The clarity of thought and the cleanliness of gesture are immediately apparent on the paper. However, there is no more text. “As an artist, I don’t know how to tell stories and I don’t believe in storytelling. I believe in the way. ” No page to turn either. The drawing of Dégé can finally be alone, in majesty on its support. Fantasized inventions from images taken from reality, his drawings form a kind of dreamlike extension to images from popular culture. The artist has a vast library of images that feeds his practice of drawing and invites itself on paper through collage.

The old engraving unites with the colored pencil to form surrealistic exquisite cadavers: horse with the body of a flower, religious fecundated by watercolor, birds with a nose or a sex. His works are vandalisms professed in the name of the imaginary by a tender color, able to change the rocks in waves or flames. Illustrator before being an artist, Guillaume Dégé was a regular contributor to the newspaper Le Monde in the years 1990-2000.

He taught at the HEAR in Strasbourg for many years and was appointed to the Ecole des arts décoratifs in Paris in 2019. He is also the co-founder, with Daniel Vincent, of the publishing house Les 4 mers. While Guillaume Dégé has published numerous albums and artists’ books – nearly thirty! – at Seuil or Gallimard among others, he has never benefited from a solid and serious monograph. Trilingual in French, English and Chinese, and accompanied by contributions from recognized art historians, this publication aims to fill this gap and provide a broad overview of the artistic practice of Guillaume Dégé.