Cécile Guicheteau

French artist Cécile Guicheteau creates surrealistic paintings that explore the intersections between exquisite beauty and the more disturbing realities that seem to pervade the subtexts of our human lives. Inspired by poets such as Baudelaire — who in his own work “binds the evil to the beautiful; the sublime to the odious” — Guicheteau manipulates her images, layering realities to reconfigure ugliness so it becomes temporarily pleasing to the eye. For Guicheteau, the idea explored in her art of the whole hiding the very details that compose it is a contemporary reality, one we grapple with every day. On the surface, each painting offers the viewer both symmetry and balance in terms of her use of color, form, and composition. But seemingly harmonious forms are comprised of more disconcerting elements, visually contained within subtle yet unsettling lines. Upon first glance, her paintings appear calm and pleasant, yet on a closer look, themes of violence, death, and more disturbing realities come to the surface... and into our consciousness.

Cécile Guicheteau’s works were published in a book of interviews with author and editor Michel Archimbaud.