Catherine Gran
Monstre aux cornes rouges, 2015
Oil on canvas
162 x 114 cm
Copyright The Artist
Catherine Gran Monstre aux cornes rouges, 2015 Oil on canvas 162 × 114 cm In Monstre aux cornes rouges, Catherine Gran approaches the fantastic creature through the conventions of portraiture....
Catherine Gran
Monstre aux cornes rouges, 2015
Oil on canvas
162 × 114 cm
In Monstre aux cornes rouges, Catherine Gran approaches the fantastic creature through the conventions of portraiture. Set against a deep, star-filled sky, the figure occupies the canvas with the solemn presence of an imaginary sovereign. Its sprawling red antlers form an intricate structure across the composition, at once organic and ornamental, while its rounded body, visible seams and inflated appendages evoke a hybrid of soft sculpture, toy and living organism.
The work belongs to Gran’s Monsters series, whose fictional origin the artist traces to an encounter with a helium-filled creature wishing to leave its family a portrait. This playful premise allows her to construct a coherent pictorial universe governed by saturated colour, pronounced contrasts and improbable anatomies. Here, technical precision lends physical credibility to an otherwise impossible being: the modelling of the volumes, the reflections on its translucent eyes and the tactile rendering of its stitched surfaces give the monster an unexpectedly tangible presence.
Presented within the exhibition Les Monstres tendres, the painting reveals the emotional ambiguity at the heart of the series. The creature’s horns suggest defensive power, yet its ungainly posture and wide, vulnerable gaze temper any sense of menace. Gran transforms monstrosity into a form of singularity, inviting an encounter with a being whose strangeness elicits curiosity, affection and recognition. Her monster appears less as an embodiment of fear than as a portrait of difference endowed with its own dignity and fragile interior life.
Monstre aux cornes rouges, 2015
Oil on canvas
162 × 114 cm
In Monstre aux cornes rouges, Catherine Gran approaches the fantastic creature through the conventions of portraiture. Set against a deep, star-filled sky, the figure occupies the canvas with the solemn presence of an imaginary sovereign. Its sprawling red antlers form an intricate structure across the composition, at once organic and ornamental, while its rounded body, visible seams and inflated appendages evoke a hybrid of soft sculpture, toy and living organism.
The work belongs to Gran’s Monsters series, whose fictional origin the artist traces to an encounter with a helium-filled creature wishing to leave its family a portrait. This playful premise allows her to construct a coherent pictorial universe governed by saturated colour, pronounced contrasts and improbable anatomies. Here, technical precision lends physical credibility to an otherwise impossible being: the modelling of the volumes, the reflections on its translucent eyes and the tactile rendering of its stitched surfaces give the monster an unexpectedly tangible presence.
Presented within the exhibition Les Monstres tendres, the painting reveals the emotional ambiguity at the heart of the series. The creature’s horns suggest defensive power, yet its ungainly posture and wide, vulnerable gaze temper any sense of menace. Gran transforms monstrosity into a form of singularity, inviting an encounter with a being whose strangeness elicits curiosity, affection and recognition. Her monster appears less as an embodiment of fear than as a portrait of difference endowed with its own dignity and fragile interior life.