Statement published in Un ciel tout vert, exh. cat., Jérôme Poggi (Paris), 2019, p. 94 & online.
Paul Mignard’s syncretic paintings revisit the landscape genre from the depths of psyche and time. He is an explorer of the expanded consciousness, whose universe thrives on para-sciences such as alchemy, astrology, and the anthropological study of ancient oral traditions or folklore from across the world. His practice’s strong ritual dimension breaks away from Western contemporary canons. Working with an acrylic medium, he sifts or blows pigments, metal powders and glitter dust directly onto loose canvases, sometimes printed beforehand and always exhibited unframed. His colorful aqueous compositions unfold visual palimpsests that evoke occult charts, linking motifs pertaining to the human body and nature to esoteric signs, geometric forms, and partial reproductions of ancient scriptures – notably pictograms and ideograms. Profoundly inspired by Taoist doctrines, Paul Mignard further suggests the mutual transformation of the self and its environment through his depiction of mental landscapes, where the past and the present, reality and imagination, as well as the sacred and the profane aren’t separated but irrevocably connected.