Representing nature is a way of thinking about the world and the way we live in it, a way of combining the wild and the imaginary, a way of seizing an age-old story and telling it in our own way. This appropriation leads to the discovery of a reinvented nature through pictorial and plastic research that tends to make the subject disappear to question it more effectively. Developing a delicate tension between color and vegetation, Clément Davout reinterprets nature with a gentle subjective poetry.

On the surfaces, simple stems with a few leaves emerge soberly from a subtly shaded background. The vegetation seems to merge with these twilight-like colors. These compositions produce the characteristic light of a sun setting the horizon ablaze, radiating a powerful, almost blinding clarity that transforms every element into a vibrant, ephemeral silhouette.

While the subject tends to disappear, to melt into the air, color floods the support to attract attention and arouse curiosity. The point of view and framing adopted are reminiscent of those used in photography, which capture the subject in the foreground, leaving the background in a colorful blur. The artist's choice of plants and the way they are portrayed does indeed capture the subject. With this in mind, the titles of the works question our relationship with these plants.

These compositions reflect the many attempts to control nature over the millennia of humanity's existence, from the domestication of plants to rampant urbanization. For some time now, however, living things have been reminding us how ephemeral control can be, as in the moments captured by Clément Davout, moments suspended in time that seem unique.

Thibaut Wauthion