Biography
“L’Atlas develops a singular approach to painting through writing, fusing kufic-inspired calligraphy with Latin typographic characters. Op Art, geometric and lyrical abstraction, ephemeral art, site-specific art and action-performances form the framework and matrix from which his work unfolds. Heir to Frank Stella’s Black Paintings and shaped canvases, L’Atlas bases his pictorial practice on the opposition and complementarity of black and white, the search for pure flatness and the strict use of orthogonal geometry. Between legible and visible, his painting renounces any figurative function, in order to allow an autonomous “visual order” to emerge, commanding the gaze like a sight or target.
In retrospect, it’s interesting to note that it was in the street that the artist first crystallized and metabolized these different cultural heritages and traditions. Like Aragon’s “peasant of Paris”, L’Atlas roams the city, carried by “the wind of the eventual”, transforming manhole covers into printing plates, celestial seals with which he marks his canvases.
For him, these metal disks are like so many stars that have fallen to earth, drawing a singular constellation. In deserted squares, he deploys his “compasses”, black-and-white compass roses that call out to the walker, enjoining him to elevate his point of view, to discover things as seen from the sky. Metamorphosis: historic squares in cities all over the world are transformed into immense tableaux in which the artist’s labyrinthine geometry unfolds.
Unlike most urban artists, who paint directly onto walls, floors or subway cars, L’Atlas usually sets up a white background with sharp edges beforehand, onto which he projects his graphics, like a movie screen. In this way, he creates his own pictorial space, at once juxtaposed and completely at odds with the context, hence the visual impact of his work.”
The Art+ vision
“The choice of the atlas as a sponsor for art+ 2025: a designation with high symbolic value”.
When it came to laying the foundations for ART+, an event born of the desire to offer a fresh reading of the contemporary scene, the appointment of a patron could not be a matter of chance or convenience. It had to reflect a position. Carry a vision. Affirm an ambition.
In this sense, the choice of L’Atlas, Jules Dedet – is neither an isolated aesthetic gesture nor a simple token of notoriety. It constitutes a curatorial act in its own right.
We’re honored that he’s agreed to take on this role, and convinced that this partnership will give our first edition the impetus it needs to make ART+ a permanent fixture on the European cultural calendar.
The Atlas in resonance with ART+
For more than two decades, L’Atlas has been building up a remarkably rigorous, immediately identifiable body of work at the confluence of cryptic language, urban cartography and geometric abstraction with an almost archaeological accent. His practice, based on a system of self-generated signs, acutely questions the spatialization of writing, the legibility of reality and our ability to orient ourselves in a world saturated with visual flux. In this way, he explores the mechanisms of perception, deconstructs conventions of reading, and redraws the boundaries between the visible and the legible.
This approach is part of a demanding, erudite graphic tradition, steeped in the legacies of Lettrism, Land Art and Minimalism. It consistently and uncompromisingly affirms the fertile porosity between forms of expression born in the street and those enshrined by the institution. In this way, L’Atlas develops a universal plastic language, where urban memory, sacred geometry and the contemporary impulse meet. A language which, in many ways, resonates with the very foundations of ART+: opening lines, creating bridges, bringing meaning out of the complexity of form.
Committed sponsorship
This fertile tension between order and chaos, between structure and spontaneity, between codified territory and free field of experimentation, is one of the major axes of reflection shared by the fair. Like L’Atlas, ART+’s mission is to decompartmentalize practices, question formats and encourage a plural reading of an artistic landscape in perpetual recomposition.
Far from a decorative posture, this sponsorship is a commitment. It places the fair in a critical dialogue with contemporary creative issues: the hybridization of plastic languages, the reconfiguration of territories of expression, and the tensions between media visibility and conceptual demands. It gives ART+ an aesthetic and intellectual anchor that legitimizes its place in the teeming landscape of international fairs.
The choice of L’Atlas is also strategic. It testifies to our determination to surround ourselves with players whose legitimacy rests on a dual foundation: museum recognition and the ability to unite a broad, cultivated and curious public. Its presence is a beacon, a landmark: for artists, collectors, institutions, and for all those who see ART+ as a strong and enduring editorial proposition.
