Antoine Presles

Biography

Antoine Presles’ portraitist works draw on an artistic tradition of morphology and privileges and focus on a discipline of observation and its confrontation with reality. Such as it was theorized by great artists of painting, sculpture or animation, this confrontation aims to emancipate the draftsman from the facilities and manias that always catch up with the practitioners of imaginative drawing.

With training as an animator, Preseles’ practise revolves around life portraiture, both in studio model sittings and also observational drawings made in public spaces. His belief is that the portrait is an exercise in relation to the world that is singularly meaningful and relevant in the context of our times.

 Beyond the deterministic super-equations of sociology or political identities, Presles’ portraits offer an alternative; a means of refining our gaze and our perspectives. By focusing on unique individuals, removing consideration for their value as "representatives of a whole" and without using them as arguments or counterarguments, he allows the subjects to be seen as themselves, for their singularity, density, nuances, contradictions, and their mystery.

 Antoine does not direct his models during the drawing sessions; they define their own poses, according to postures and movements that are familiar to them, but also according to their ease in front of the artist, and what they want to show of themselves, their extreme reserve or their strong expressions.