Galerie Paul Prouté

Like Piranesi, whose disciple he considers himself, Gérard Trignac draws on his initial training as an architect (completed in Bordeaux, his hometown) to engrave his imagined constructions on copper. While he shares with Piranesi a taste for darkness, dramatic effects and the accumulation of monumental structures, Trignac nonetheless adapts these elements to a contemporary aesthetic shaped by concrete, metal, industry, science fiction and comic art. His deserted landscapes, inspired by real cities (a series of Paris views illustrating Philippe Soupault’s Ode à Paris) or imaginary ones (drawn in particular from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities), reveal, beyond the homage to past engravers (not only Piranesi but also Rodolphe Bresdin), a certain anxiety about the present and a fear of a dehumanised future. His commitment to fine craftsmanship leads him to handle personally the always limited print runs of his etchings, worked with burin and drypoint.