Stephan Laplanche (1970) lives and works in Paris.

Stephan Laplanche’s abstract painting finds itself in conflict with contemporary art. He
works in the tradition of of the second generation of abstract American expressionists such
as Norman Bluhm, Alfred Leslie, Joan Mitchell thus extending the great movement known
as “action painting.”

In 1985 he studies at Janos Ber’s studios. There he learns how to observe and is taught
charcoal and oil painting techniques. He commits himself to a pictorial perspective that
confronts the problems of composition, mass and rhythms of expression.
Touched by the emotional impact of paintings by Sam Francis and Bram Van Velde, Stephan
Laplanche dives into abstraction, resolved to explore the liberty and the power of
e!xpression it permits.

His work always appears to be in progress. The canvas is the theater where creation and
destruction struggle. It is out of this struggle, and the traces of this struggle, from which
emotions surface. The painting is the experience of time and what remains. The painting is
an attempt to appropriate time and to make it a point of fusion. Using superimposed stains
or structured forms, he employs colors that provoke an unstable balance. This sense of flux
creates movement, giving the impression that the work is creating itself out of its own
energy. His colors are intense, sometimes to the point of saturation. Unknown, unwanted
and inconsistent colors only appear in this power struggle which he calls “l’ érotique de la
couleur.”

His work is found somewhere between self-affirmation, “the action” of Hartung, and the
retreat, focusing on the accidental but also by according respect to the material used.
Despite the incessant back and forth of his brush, he wagers that the canvas is the space in
which a personal language is discovered. Color is the materialization of this personal space,
it is its place and its battlefield.

For Laplanche, painting is not just the creation of an object resulting from action or personal
desire. Rather, it is the meeting point of the most ancient form of human art, and the most
immediate, where raw desire leaves a trace and the experience of time outside oneself
mingles with a simple gesture - a brushstroke on a structure. Laplanche recalls what
Dubuffet says of this simple gesture “it is always at the limit of the most inane and miserable
scribble and of a small miracle.”

MAIN PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS

2016 : galerie Pierre Hallet, Bruxelles, Belgique
2015 : galerie ArtFloor, Paris, France
2014 : galerie Pierre Hallet, Bruxelles, Belgique.
2013 : galerie Blank, Bruxelles, Belgique.
2009 : galerie Deneulin, Barraux, France.
2008 : galerie Arts Expression Libre, Paris, France.
2007 : Printemps français, musée des beaux-arts de Kharkov, Ukraine.
2007 : Institut français d'Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine.
2006 : espace Adue, Verviers, Belgique.
2006 : galerie MDZ, Knokke, Belgique.
2004 : galerie MDZ, Knokke, Belgique.
2004 : galerie Prince de Condé, Spa, Belgique.

MAIN GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2011 : galerie Nicolas Plescoff, Paris, France.
2011 : (e)merge art fair, Honfleur Gallery, Washington DC, USA.
2010 : AAF, Honfleur Gallery, New York, USA.
2010 : galerie ArtFloor, Paris, France.
2008 : Métamorphoses érotiques, La Raffinerie, Montreuil, France.
2009 : galerie ArtFloor, Paris, France.
2006 : galerie Prince de Condé, Spa, Belgique.
2005 : salon de peinture de Dourdan, France.
2004 : Lineart, galerie MDZ, Gand, Belgique.

Prize
The MasterCard Prize 2010.

Residency
2012 :  Arch/Honfleur Gallery, Washington, USA.