More than ten years after the emergence of the tondo in his work, and the creation of some thirty works in the years 2010/2012, the circular form has again recently imposed itself on artist Dan Barichasse in his Paris studio in the former Chaptal factory in Montreuil.

In itself, the circle is an absolute, perfect form, an absolute culmination.

In this roundness that intensifies the movements of the material in a vertiginous circularity, where form and substance are in perfect harmony, a sensuality, a spirituality, a limpidity, an infinite movement all come to the fore.

In turn, Dan Barichasse conjures up the elements Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Breath and Void, freed from any prior structure, and unfurling in greater freedom, replaying the formation of matter, the passage from chaos to an organized universe. In a systematic search for the origins of life, the painter seems intent on drawing the cosmic invisible.
With multiple layers and drippings of inks and singular emulsions superimposed on his dizzying 130 cm-diameter tondos, Dan Barichasse, like an alchemist, plunges us into the microcosm as much as the macrocosm, reminding us that we are as much atom as stardust. All his works are largely inspired by his assiduous and inspiring reading of countless biblical and ancient texts, often poetic.
While this artist's creative freedom seems infinite, the fact remains that, faced with these tondos with their rich connotations, the pictorial challenge remains considerable, for it imposes on the painter a double movement of adherence to, but above all the transcending of, this symbolic universe.

TONDI N+10

Dan Barichasse