Eric Liot

Eric Liot (born 1968) is a French artist whose hybrid practice brings together assemblage, painted bas-relief and sculpture. Steeped in pop and urban culture, he cuts, layers and paints wood, cardboard, found objects and industrial materials to compose vibrant picture-objects. His pieces summon icons from comic strips, cinema and advertising, along with vernacular signs (shopfront lettering, typography), which he reworks into fragmented narratives. The frontality of his flat colour planes, the crisp outlines and the textures of the support lend his works an immediate physical presence, somewhere between torn poster and domestic totem.

Since the 2000s, Liot has exhibited in galleries and at fairs across Europe and the United States; his series range across portraits, genre scenes and pop still lifes, playing on the ambivalence between nostalgia and a critique of the cultural industries. His assemblage technique, akin to sculptural collage, allows for a play of depth, shadow and relief that renews the tradition of the painted panel. References to Rauschenberg, Nouveau Réalisme and Figuration Libre sit alongside a thoroughly contemporary graphic sensibility.

Eric Liot’s significance lies in his ability to transform familiar imagery into singular objects in which the circulation of images, fetishisation and desire are played out, all while upholding precise craftsmanship and an accessible reading.