Conversation with Hugo Pernet

The least we can say is that Hugo Pernet's painting has evolved since his beginnings.  

Evolved, because his first years of pictorial research led him to the side of conceptual painting, or rather geometric and conceptual painting, marked by the theory of modernism and its endgames.

But just as Olivier Mosset came to painting without a vocation, out of mischief, before getting caught up in the game, Hugo Pernet gradually embraced a more physical, sensual and even sometimes romantic approach to the pictorial medium. This evolution led to a shift towards figuration, as well as chromatic and thematic experimentation. Hugo Pernet's paintings succeed in being both literalist and expressionist, always recognizable even though his style - if we must use this old-fashioned term - is constantly evolving, and at the same time extremely serious and funny. 

In this interview, we'll take a look back at this trajectory, a beautiful story of pictorial relaxation, but also at the links forged between painting and poetry in the artist's work.  

Hugo Pernet was born in 1983, and lives and works in Dijon.