Yves Oppenheim

The expansive work of Yves Oppenheim (*1948 Antananarivo, MG; †2022 Saint-Martin-de-Valamas, FR) is characterised by a rigorous two-dimensional composition with a rhythm all of its own. Vibrant colour fields with smooth, rough and sometimes structured surface textures, set apart from each other by hazy black shadows or hard edges, appear to split into different levels and assume a verticality as they rise to meet the viewer and form their own coloured pictorial space. The impression is of a collage, of scraps of paper, some slashed, some torn, glued in place, discernible to the touch. Oppenheim uses a computer to design his panel paintings, creating the interplay of form and colour in painstaking detail. His art borrows from the colour-field painting techniques of Jeremy Moon (*1934, Altrincham, GB; †1973 London, GB) and Barnett Newman (*1905 New York, USA; †1970 New York, USA), and following their tradition, he creates the perfect suggestion of space, which gradually evolves, only to dissolve again as logic breaks down. Despite his Malagasy origins, Oppenheim's work is firmly grounded in the European visual experience, which constantly seeks a spatial layering of fore- and background. But there comes a point when the viewer realises that this three-dimensionality is nothing but an illusion. Like Henri Matisse (*1869 Le Cateau-Cambrésis, FR; †1954 Nice, FR), Oppenheim always ends up pressing background and foreground into a single plane. It is at this point that the viewer is thrown back into the picture by its rhythmic composition, and the fun starts anew.