En Chine, à Hu Xian 1974

Gerard Fromanger made this painting, En Chine, à Hu Xian, and what strikes me is the flat application of these block colours—red, green, blue, yellow—creating these almost silhouette-like figures. I can imagine Fromanger thinking about how to capture a sense of collective identity. He would have seen his process as a form of inquiry, constantly shifting things around on the canvas. I sympathise with his desire to explore different ways of seeing the world. Looking at the faces, the gestures, I sense a desire to explore a new perspective. The paint is really flat and graphic, but I can also see the hand of the artist there in the way the paint has been applied. It’s not mechanical; you can feel the body, the emotion of the artist in each colour block. This reminds me a little of the work of David Hockney, who also used flat colour in his paintings. Artists are constantly in conversation with one another, aren’t they? I love the way painting allows for ambiguity, for different readings, inviting us all to participate in the construction of meaning.