Things overturned, seen from above, or as shadows… the geometry of Pierre Collin’s engraving is disquieting — even dramatic, right from his earliest work at Madrid’s Casa Velasquez in the early 80s.
On the copper plate, his gaze becomes photographic, dazzling, almost like a film still, diametrically opposed to the usual minute detail of engravers.
His oeuvre, which crisscrosses constantly between drawing, painting and engraving, translates a daily life that is tranquil, without being picturesque: a barn, a beach, or the seat of someone driving along a monotonous highway. Nothing is disturbing in the world of Pierre Collin’s imagination — but nothing is reassuring either. Equilibrium is everywhere. Yet a certain malaise can slip into this quietude, and jubilation can crop up in the midst of apparent ennui.
In Pierre Collin’s engravings, borders are visible, diagonals unpredictable. Fugitive instants in which the eyes gets lost, daydreams that telescope hallucinations and memories; and always his subjective way of implicating the viewer. Pierre Collin offers a modern approach to the exercise of vanity. By association of images or enlarging the field of vision to the impossible, he finds in the blind spots what the spirit perceives when the gaze allows itself to get lost. He traces this psychological border sharply, playing with reflections, windows and diptychs. Light disintegrates, sometimes letting in figures who observe us as much as we observe them.