Imprematur

With this new series, Yannick Saillet continues his practice and his reflection on the status of the work and that of the imprint, the signature. The work and the artist end up merging into a single proposal. Conceived as an affirmation of his status as an artist (his initials Y.S. forming a YES of acceptance) but also as a process of obsessive repetition, this initials, known in his previous works as a pattern whose serial, repetitive alignment recalled certain conceptual and minimalist works, takes on a whole new meaning here.

It rediscovers its original meaning, that of significance, of a statement of principle, even of a validation beyond pure form, of the simple ‘pattern’. The artist has abandoned the traditional medium of the canvas and the limited space of the gallery for an experience ‘outside the walls’, an ‘in situ’ work that is part of a more radical approach at the confluence of graffiti, street art and photography. There's no point in trying to define Yannick Saillet's work: he doesn't fit into any of these pre-established categories, any movement, any school, but makes them all his own in a process that combines wandering, the eye that scans, the gesture, the hand that signs and the camera that literally ‘fixes’ the moment. In the final analysis, Yannick Saillet seems to be putting his imprimatur on these inert sections of wall, the backdrops of a banal everyday life, which he nevertheless validates with his monogram and elevates ‘to the dignity of an art object by the simple choice of the artist’, to borrow André Breton's famous phrase.