Lisson Studio

Christopher Le Brun 'Momentarium'

In a special filmed interview, conducted to coincide with the 2022 exhibition in London entitled Momentarium, Christopher Le Brun discusses his processes, influences and training. Recorded during a single day in the life of his studio practice, Le Brun goes from home to studio to gallery: “There aren’t any reasons for painting. That’s what’s special about it... You suddenly get this compulsion. I think the art that interests me lives in that world. I’m putting art in a particular place where it doesn’t need explanation. It doesn’t need justification. It’s essential that it’s not used for other purposes which will take away from what’s mysterious about it.” Filmed by Cultureshock Media. Quotes accompanying video stills come from a conversation between Le Brun and Lisson Gallery's Andreas Leventis, 2022. 

“One of the great virtues of painting is that it is the preeminent physical demonstration of human touch. Touch is like our fingerprints. But intelligence in painting is different from cleverness. It’s to do with the senses. It’s the judgements of one’s hand. Which does sound strange, but of course, [but when] habitually painting your hand develops memories of ways to do things that have their own truth.”
 
“It’s a very curious thing that we spend at least a third of our lives asleep and dreaming. Clearly that’s a natural function that’s essential for us. The dream of painting is a type of complete freedom. I think in my case, I only achieve anything near that by having spent years thinking about it.” 

“The traditional training of an artist was to how to make the best of colour; how to make the best of light; how to make the best of composition, of scale, texture, of handling all these things. But in order to transcend those things, they need to be completely taken in. So that ideally they can just work smoothly, seamlessly, soundlessly almost. Then you hope the painting will come.”

“One of the characteristics of recent paintings can be described as modularity. It’s a rather ugly word, but it means paintings that can expand, that can have multiple panels. I’ve built on this idea of combinations of opposites, of paradoxes within works and, and extended them. And it goes into directions, not only the combination of opposite things, opposite colours, opposite manners, but also opposite methods. Part of the idea a painting as a collection of moments is that the panels also act as a series of moments, you see them all combined, all brought together. It’s like someone’s playing the flute and then there’s the full orchestra.”

Credits:
Filmed by Cultureshock Media
Directed by Sarah Strickland
DOP: Ollie Craig
Sound: Thomas Hart-George
Interviewer: Kami Naglik
Edit producers: Emilia Eyre & Sarah Strickland
Editor: Chris Black
Music: White Book 3 (based on paintings by Christopher Le Brun) by Graham Lych
Performed by: Paul Sánchez, from the album, 'Seria Ludo' (Divine Art DDA). 
Published by: Composers Edition