Multidisciplinary artist faithfully followed by collectors and enlightened authors, chantalpetit has developed a prolific body of work organized into major sequences, like so many chapters in a whirlwind novel. Exercices de sauvagerie, transfigures, atelier de pan, festin des dieux, phusis, seul dans la splendeur are just some of the titles of these cycles, within which paintings, sculptures, drawings and videos interact and generate one another to form a living corpus in constant mutation. The sculptures sometimes seem to emerge from the paintings, and in turn serve as support for the videos. At the heart of the artist’s practice, improvisation and accident contradict a more classical style. The strength of his art undoubtedly lies in this duality. In each of the mediums she uses, chantalpetit always plays on two registers: construction and destruction of forms, wildness and sophistication, materials and reserves, mastery and freedom.

chantalpetit – 19732023 is conceived as a great chronological novel, spanning fifty years, with eleven chapter headings. Its form is guided by the cyclical nature of the artist’s work, which is made up of very different series (paintings, drawings, sculptures, videos) that fit into one another. The book’s format is similar to the one she uses most in painting: the figure, a rectangle that veers towards the square.