Recently in Paris, Whitewall Projects unveiled an inaugural group presentation. On view alongside Art Basel Paris, nearby the Grand Palais, the exhibition, “From Nature” cascaded throughout a stunning Parisian apartment on 37 Roosevelt 75008 Paris.
Deftly curated by Emma Donnersberg, Marion Guggenheim, and Nicolas Dewavrin, the mesmeric show spotlit visionaries Maho Nakamura, Fabien Adèle, Louis Alcaraz, Apollinaria Broche, Mia Chaplin, Eugénie Didier, Daria Dmytrenko, DRIFT, Sasha Ferré, Pandora Graessl, Rafael Y. Herman, Alexandre Lenoir, William Macnad, Ileana García Magoda, Kami Mierzvvinsk, Roman Moriceau, and the masterly Clement Bataille. The elegant presentation was staged by Donnersberg, amplified by Flos lighting and Diptyque fragrances.
The soulful and skillful Bataille imaparts his poetics through a variety of mediums, including drawing, sculpture, animation, and painting, invoking childhood revelations and spiritual explorations into every nuanced creation. With a grand sense of humor the artist voyages through the deep vortexes of memory, family, and religion, meticulously layering motifs of ethereality, obscurity, elegance, and kitsch. The final masterpieces reveal an enchanting, hushed universe of all that is sacred in nature, life, and beyond.
Clément Bataille Portrait by Laurent Poleo-Garnier.
WHITEWALL: How would you describe your creative practice?
CLEMENT BATAILLE: I am a painter and ceramicist. I love to say that I paint like a copyist monk. It means that craft and motif repetition is at the core of what I do. As an historian by training, I borrow a lot from the compositions of Italian primitive paintings or Byzantine icons. But I always end-up chipping away at their perfection by zooming in excessively or mixing it with social media content.
“I love to say that I paint like a copyist monk. It means that craft and motif repetition is at the core of what I do,”
Clement Bataille
WW: How do you see your work in relationship to nature? How do you connect with nature?
CB: I am not really an outdoor person. What fascinates me is more the artificiality of our contact with nature. The idea of a garden is what I love about nature. The one of Derek Jarman is a current obsession of mine. In the end, I tend to prefer the fantasy version of nature. For instance, I am a big fan of how animals were portrayed before photography—like the tiny dogs in renaissance paintings, the giraffe of Bosch or the rhinoceros of Dürer.
WW: Tell us about your color and material palette. What tones and textures are you drawn to?
CB: I am a man of shine and sleek. For colors, I love the way a blue resonates when painted on top of a deep red. Yellow is my all time favorite color—I love to use it almost pure and only in details.
Clément Bataille, “Incarnation du serpent + Quatre glands,” oil on wood, 2024, 2x20x25cm, courtesy of the artist.
Hypnotic Works Fusing French Renaissance Paintings, Instagram, and AI
WW: Can you tell us about the work that will be on view in the exhibition in Paris this October?
CB: All the work on view at the exhibition “From Nature” is oil on wood. They are like “fake news,” the painted images are made up of scattered fragments brought together like a collage and giving an artificial illusion of déjà vu. Details of Pontormo, Memling and French renaissance painters are mixed with photos found on Instagram and/or generated by AI. In one painting, I painted a human heart in the flesh but the model was actually the plastic dog toy that the painter Marion Bataillard left on my palette one day to scare me.
“They are like ‘fake news,’ the painted images are made up of scattered fragments brought together like a collage and giving an artificial illusion of déjà vu.”
Clement Bataille
WW: What was the starting point for this work?
CB: I think I started with the idea to paint snakes. I love this animal—graphic, beautiful and frightening at the same time. Also, in the Bible, the snake is the tempter who throws us into the distance from nature I was mentioning. Far from paradise, everything is nothing more than artifice.
Clément Bataille, “Colle (view),” oil on wood, 2024, 24.5x30cm, courtesy of the artist.
Working With a Personal Library Inside a Garden-like Studio
WW: Where do you typically begin with an artwork?
CB: It always starts with the desire to paint an image picked in my personal library of screenshots from movies, Instagram and pictures from museums. Then, I work with this image like on a collage adding details and background coming from elsewhere. For instance, it can be the body of an influencer with a Renaissance background found at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin—in the end everything blends together in the process of painting.
WW: Can you tell us about your studio?
CB: Like any self-respecting monk, I paint from home—but I am lucky enough to have a room of my own. When I paint, I love to feel surrounded by books and without direct sunlight. The atmosphere of the room is quite unique—the walls are silver as a cloudy sky, the floor is a green vinyl floor with dots like in a gymnasium and I have two wide blue ceramic lights that look like a summer sky. All-in-all, my studio is my artificial little garden.
“Far from paradise, everything is nothing more than artifice,”
Clement Bataille
WW: What is a typical day like for you there?
CB: Most of the time I spend there is actually by night.
WW: Is there an element of your creative process you make sure to do each day?
CB: When I am stuck, I always look at the Piero della Francesca monograph I own to find some inspiration and keep things simple.
WW: What are you working on next in the studio?
CB: I am currently working on the largest piece I have ever made—a triptyque for the Salon de Montrouge that will take place next February. I hope to see you there. I will also be showing a set of portraits on ceramics.
Clément Bataille, “François (view),” Glazed earthenware vase, 2024, 18x28x8cm, courtesy of the artist.
