To enter in the work of Patrick Cambolin, you need to follow a line. A line in time, that of his life, of his encounters, of his crushes, and the lines that he deploys to render in his own way the world around us.
Born in 1947 and later graduated in Graphic Arts and Plastic Arts, Patrick Cambolin carries out, in parallel of his artistic career, a professional life in the field of the communication, he works as artistic director then as creative director in big French and foreign agencies in Paris. Today he divides his life between Sardinia and Burgundy, where he works as a graphic consultant for wineries.
From his life in the heart of the Latin Quarter, he has kept a taste for observing the crowd and searching for silhouettes that reflect elegance. The line is also what structures and reveals the form, as in the series of portraits "known/unknown" where it underlines the silhouette which is melted in the color and the abstraction, and then gives him strength and presence. From the grammar of the portrait, the artist keeps only the silhouette, eliminating the main object of this style of painting: the faces. Then, he transforms them into "strangers".
Afterwards, on two-colored backgrounds, with a fine line, he redraws the clothes, giving a sensation of presence that is sublimated by this simple line that hems in the outline of the characters. This graphic treatment gives each of them some psychological traits that make us recognize in them characters that are familiar to us, it is then that they become "known". The creations of Patrick Cambolin, very graphic, show the elegance of the lines that surround us.
Cedric LE BORGNE
Ars Essentia Art Gallery