The Gesture and the Material

The exhibition “The Gesture and the Material” presents the creations of Kitikong Tilokwattanotai and Tanguy Kan, artists whose practices, though clearly distinct, center around a contemporary re-appropriation of ancestral techniques. Their paintings transform gestures into traces and materials into language. Rooted in deep cultural heritage, their works explore abstraction in a space where emotion, memory, and texture converge.
Kitikong and Tanguy do not reinvent materials; they re-interpret them. Their works, simultaneously tactile and visual, transform traditional craftsmanship into modern expressions, where every stroke and every layer tells a story, both intimate and universal.

Kitikong Tilokwattanotai: organic energy and calligraphic heritage

Thai artist Kitikong Tilokwattanotai brings traditional techniques from the past to create abstract works. His acrylic and lacquer on handmade paper, as well as his oil paintings on tamarind ground, both rely on ancestral techniques.

Tamarind seed glue, used for centuries in the murals of Buddhist temples in northern Thailand, served as a natural binder to secure pigments and gold leaf. The lacquer, widely used in Asian crafts and art, transforms into a medium revealing the paper’s organic texture and enhances the pigments’ color intensity.

In his work, Kitikong does not simply perpetuate these techniques; he shapes them with an organic energy inspired by his emotions. His compositions, where bright colors overlap in dynamic layers, evoke nature in motion, between the vegetal and the mineral. The influence of calligraphy reveals itself in his gestures: each stroke, each flat area of color, seems to convey a kind of written rhythm, like a choreography between control and spontaneity. The tactile dimension of his works plays a central role: the uneven texture of the handmade paper combined with the brightness of the lacquer, and his brushstrokes on the tamarind flat surfaces invite the viewer to engage in a visual and sensory exploration.

Tanguy Kan: poetry of landscapes and memory of wax

Tanguy Kan, of Vietnamese origin and based in the Perche region, draws his inspiration from landscapes and poetry, while anchoring his work in deep emotion. His preferred technique – painting with saponified wax on wood – is part of a historical tradition: this medium, already used in Christian icons and miniatures of past centuries, was explored by artists such as M. Bachelier in the 18th century, as documented by Diderot in « The History and Secret of Wax Painting » (1755). Wax, malleable and durable, allows the contrasts of transparency, depth, and light, while preserving a rich and sensory texture.

For Tanguy, the artistic gesture takes the central role. His works, often minimalist, play on the contrasts between dynamic lines and flat areas of soft color, like a visual script where each stroke is a memory in motion. Saponified wax, with its ability to capture light and create blurry effects, becomes the ideal medium for expressing this poetry of inner landscapes. His work, on the boundary between imagination and materiality, abstraction and figuration, evokes horizons and memories of earth and sky, where emotion intertwines with the material offering a visual and tactile experience