Nicolas Poignon

Born in 1963 in Nancy, France, and now working in Berlin, Nicolas Poignon elevate the everyday through his detailed urban natural landscapes, executed in the desperate mediums of silver point and oil painting alike.

His urban landscapes, normally depicting scenes of Naples and various Italian commune, evoke the energy of human dynamism moving and living without ever depicting a single person. He paints the looted tangle of clothes, lines, drying towel Balk on balcony rails, open window shutters letting the breeze into homes, the diagonal zag of telephone wires. Poignon evokes how people live within and inhabit the world, without needing to represent them explicitly. This is a rare talent that, in doing so, also evokes the absent sense of solitude that seeing lived in homes with nobody in them creates. Indeed, upon looking at his oil works, you might imagine the sound of daily life that would be heard in reality. But, because you cannot engage visually with the owners of these imagine voices, his urban landscapes become really rather lonely. That loneliness impresses onto the viewer in much the same way as coming home to a silent dark house does after a period of absence.

This loneliness also pervades his silver point sketches. Most of these work have picked more natural landscapes or at least, less urban ones. They appear to the viewer, thanks to the delicate finish of silver point, like the memory of a place rather than its literal occupation in space. From views of Crete to land landscapes turning with the seasons, Poignon creates landscapes that appear to be memories: a femoral, imperfect, fading, but utterly beautiful because of this

Having attended courses at the École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques in Paris, Poignon would eventually enrol in the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Brussels. He was the winner of the 2015 Prix Marcel Mambré at the Biennale de l’Éstampes in Saint-Maur.