ALAIN GERARD CLEMENT
b. Balesmes, France

Inspired by East Indian mythology, Alain Gerard Clement's ornate, symbolic and elaborately composed narratives evoke medieval tapestries, decorative ironwork and surrealist fantasies. Clement employs a cliché-verre technique, which uses glass as a negative for a drawing. Traditionally, the glass is covered with an opaque ground, such as paint or smoke, and the image is scratched through the surface with a pointed instrument to create a negative for contact printing or enlargement. Clement modifies this technique by directly placing transparent or semi-transparent floral motifs cut from lace and doilies onto the glass plate. He then places the glass in contact with a large sheet of silver chloride paper and exposes it to natural sunlight, affixing the image in a rich sepia-toned background.

In the late 1960s, Clement studied law and art history at the University of Dijon. In 1978 he moved to New York, and a year later to Texas, where he has lived and worked since.

Artwork from top to bottom:

Tunis Series, 1999
photogenic drawing

Tunis Series #6, 1999
photogenic drawing

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