Mixing banality and strangeness: the disconcerting canvases of François Malingrëy

From his work emanates a disturbing strangeness. In his figurative canvases, François Malingrëy depicts a difficult-to-identify world populated by human and sometimes animal characters. The son of an illustrator, François Malingrëy trained at the HEAR (Haute École des Arts du Rhin) in Strasbourg and has developed a realism all his own. Obsessed with the human form, the artist depicts bodies that exude great modesty despite their near nudity. Whether painted, carved or drawn in bizarre situations, the pictorial treatment of his figures is reminiscent of parodied icons. The actions performed by the characters have no comprehensible logic, and the muted color palette used adds a dark, melancholy quality to the whole.

By evoking Western iconography, notably Italian and Flemish, François Malingrëy places his paintings within a revisited art history, whose narrative aspect enables new narratives to emerge. It is the viewer’s imagination that the artist seems to be appealing to, given the ambivalent aspect of what he stages. A world of tension tinged with a certain melancholy.