Artist Statement

Digital paintings at GALERIE CORINNE CAMINADE

There tend to be two types of digital image: first of all the photographic image, equally a component of digital video, secondly graphics and images close to comic strips. I try to create another type of image that comes under figurative painting.

Working with software of great technical flexibility, Florian Schneider rids himself of the constraints of pictorial matter, allowing him to make a fuller exploration of imagination and memory. Women’s faces take form, touch by touch. Painted without a model, either living or photographic, these portraits of strangers are developed in a fictional and poetic genealogy.

Rather than deposing painting, digital techniques allow to continue here practising it while extending its methods: painting without paint.

The act of painting is not defined by the materiality of the medium, that is to say the canvas, brush or the famous smell of turpentine. For me, it’s the hand, the line and the liquidity of the matter which define it as such. Virtual painting defends not only the act of painting, but also makes it possible to experience tangible and sensitive immateriality.

• FLORIAN SCHNEIDER