With a career spanning three decades and encompassing over 20 solo shows internationally, Tom Climent has brought a fresh series of paintings to the prestigious Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in his new solo exhibition titled État Sauvage / Wilding. Heralded by art critic Cristín Leach as a “pull-push between growth and decomposition, stillness and movement, presence and escape”, Climent’s wildly colourful oeuvre encompasses a distinct desire to capture the dynamism of the ever-changing natural environment. The artist’s first solo show in Paris consists of 15 paintings, each completed in 2024, which explore the convergence of light and form in undulating landscapes and blossoming flora, manifesting on the canvas as an accumulation of bright patches of colour and texture. The exhibition’s opening ceremony on February 1 coincided with the beginning of the Imbolc festivities, setting an introductory tone of renewal and regrowth — it was an evening of almost tangible hope, ushering in the season of spring.
“Upon entering the room, one has the immediate sense that the paintings are somehow in conversation, calling out to one another across the gallery space in the enigmatic language of colour. The viewer is, of course, invited to join in”
Stepping into the brightly lit gallery, visitors are submerged in an atmosphere of dynamic vibrancy. Each painting is mounted upon white walls, outlining the gallery space, save for two large-scale works hung on either side of a freestanding wall at the centre of the room. The blankness of the spatial background not only elevates each piece from its surface, but also gives depth to the exhibition as a whole. It is almost as if we are looking outwards, with each canvas acting as a window into Climent’s dreamlike world of distinct light and tone. Upon entering the room, one has the immediate sense that the paintings are somehow in conversation, calling out to one another across the gallery space in the enigmatic language of colour. The viewer is, of course, invited to join in.
As a painter, Climent is preoccupied with the rendering of light in his paintings. “I see myself as a maker” he says, “and for me it’s very much about trying to be positive, trying to create light, almost call to light.” His earlier work showcases a clear endeavour to depict the point of transference from darkness to light, using the full capacity of the colour wheel to achieve this. Transceiver (2019) portrays an almost geological mass of colour protruding from a landscape of blacks and greys; here, the light is spilling outwards from the earth, creating itself in an almost volcanic process.
In État Sauvage, however, Climent has created a world in which light reigns and evolves perpetually. The flowering subject depicted in Garden Iris grows out into the breadth of the canvas; its many-coloured, gritty-textured petals jut upwards towards an imagined source of light, reflected on its form. The larger painting Mantle Growth shows a similarly prismatic subject, this time an expansive terrain taking up the majority of the canvas, cut off slightly at the top by a strikingly blue sky. The landscape is fragmented into patches of textured colour representing light, bringing together materiality and illumination in the abstract composition. Climent’s aim to “create light” relies precisely on the concurrence between these two essential entities. Without illumination, the painting itself would not even exist.
“Upon entering the room, one has the immediate sense that the paintings are somehow in conversation, calling out to one another across the gallery space in the enigmatic language of colour. The viewer is, of course, invited to join in”
If Tom Climent’s earlier work was an attempt to capture moments of colour-filled emergence of light from darkness, then État Sauvage is a dynamic imagination of the post-darkness utopia of blooming landscapes and natural forms. Upon entering the room, one has the immediate sense that the paintings are somehow in conversation, calling out to one another across the gallery space in the enigmatic language of colour. The viewer is, of course, invited to join in. As long as the light remains, the earth will continue to adapt, grow and bloom in an extraordinary spectrum of vibrant colour.
The exhibition will run until Sunday, 13 April 2025 at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris.
