NO#AR — The Matter as Breath, the Gesture as Memory

Exhibiting in Monaco is never trivial. For NO#AR, a painter from Vence, it was a natural, almost inevitable step in a journey where matter became breath and gesture, respiration. “Exhibiting is always difficult for me. It’s a way of laying myself bare,” he confides. That vulnerability, he experienced fully at Espace 22, during a collective exhibition organized by Art Collect®, where his paintings found deep resonance in the eyes of the Monegasque public.

Before this adventure, the artist felt ready. After years of research and solitary work, he had just hung more than fifty pieces for a solo exhibition at the Galerie Bleue in Vence. That first face-to-face with the public freed him from an old restraint. In Monaco, it was no longer about presenting, but about confronting — confronting color with light, matter with space, painting with life.

NO#AR comes from a world of rigor. His first works, done in watercolor, faithfully depicted his surroundings. This applied realism nourished his technique for years, but eventually limited his creative breath. “Depicting pure figurative reality frustrated me,” he admits. So, he broke away. Slowly. Layer by layer. Through successive gestures. Instinct began to prevail over precision, imagination over description. And from that rupture was born a new freedom — a personal pictorial language where lines respond to one another, contradict, and merge.

Today, NO#AR’s painting unfolds like a musical score. Each line answers another, each space breathes, each silence of matter speaks. His gesture, sharp and organic, follows in the lineage of great explorers of transformation: Chagall, Dubuffet, Alechinsky. Like them, he does not copy the world — he reinvents it. His painting explains nothing; it searches.

The work he presented recently — dense, almost telluric — is proof of this. A canvas where ochre, brown, black, and raw textures intertwine in a controlled chaos. The eye follows broken lines, sketched silhouettes, fragments of human figures emerging from a maelstrom of texture. It is a painting of tension and movement, where drawing seems to rise from an inner tumult. The nervous, scratched black lines sometimes recall prehistoric markings or Dubuffet’s notebooks; the color pulses like embers beneath ash. One senses both the discipline of the former draftsman and the freedom of the painter he has become.

NO#AR often speaks of rhythm, of breath, of musicality. His gesture can be listened to as much as it can be seen. He doesn’t seek immediate beauty but inner coherence. Some works, more colorful, captivate through their vitality; others, darker and more textured, challenge and linger. He knows this duality well: “My work provokes mixed reactions. The small colorful formats seduce; the larger, more rugged ones confront.” This oscillation — between shadow and light, between softness and roughness — lies at the heart of his art.

The Monaco exhibition marked a turning point. It brought him more than visibility — it brought resonance. NO#AR found what he was truly seeking: not recognition, but encounter. He remembers two passionate art lovers who took the time to immerse themselves in his work, to grasp its intimate logic. These sincere, profound exchanges confirmed his path.

Since then, the artist has continued his exploration. He speaks of a work “in constant gestation,” of a painting that renews itself as it confronts life. While color remains present, black and white have begun to dominate — like a breath, a purification. He is now developing an ambitious project: a composition of multiple small drawings, arranged in a deliberately disordered harmony, forming both a global work and a constellation of autonomous fragments.

NO#AR moves against the current of trends, remaining faithful to a deeply personal demand. Painting, for him, is still a vital act — and a struggle. He sums it up without artifice: “Painting is a passion… and a curse.” And perhaps it is precisely this tension, between fervor and lucidity, that gives his work its power — a painting inhabited, sensitive, profoundly human, where matter becomes breath and gesture, memory.