Thomas Lanfranchi

Editions Dilecta are pleased to announce the publication of Thomas Lanfranchi’s first monograph, a bilingual edition in French and English composed of three parts, each printed on different paper.

The first part is dedicated to the artist’s sculptural and performance work, and is magnificently illustrated by forty photographs. These images, taken around the world between the 1990s and now, show spectacular flying forms made by the artist from plastic bags of varying colors and patterns. Pictured beside the sea or in the mountains, they rise upwards, brought to life by the wind.

Essays by François Caodou, Amélie Lucas-Gary and Marguerite Pilven form the heart of the book, complementing the iconography and allowing readers to immerse themselves in the varied aspects of Thomas Lanfranchi’s universe.

Lastly, fifty of the artist’s drawings are reproduced depicting imaginary forms, animals, and figures, cut out of the same materials as his celestial bodies, and completed by ballpoint pen. Some of them are accompanied by short texts written by the artist.

"The idea of sculpture, developed over of several centuries of history, immediately conjures up notions of solidity, durability, even of nobility. The forms that Thomas Lanfranchi constructs adhere to the absolute reverse of such notions: made of poor materials, such as plastic and scotch tape, they’re as fragile as they are ephemeral. But there’s more. We should look at them in their moment of being: there, at our feet, almost without form, inert, dead unless lifted into the air for the wind to fill them. Thomas Lanfranchi’s sculpture is indeed a kind of performance, which is as much a performance as the forms in question are sculpture."

"It seems quite obvious that this is the way in which he approaches his drawings. We know how much drawing depends on gesture. But who is guiding the gesture here? Perhaps this fusion, this communication with the powers at play in nature. A little, in other words, like the famous prehistoric drawings that adorn the grottos, drawings for which we’re not sure of their purpose, but for which we can be certain was not for what we define as being a function for drawing today. Just as they seem to come out of the walls, expressing or searching to capture the souls of the bodies, the soul of things, so Thomas Lanfranchi’s drawings often give one the impression that they’re coming out of the paper. Animal, organic, sometimes fantastic animals that he embellishes with colored zones, cut out of adhesive sheets stuck down here and there, which reminiscent of the stuff and color of his celestial bodies, these papers are the equivalent on a smaller scale. Here, as there, it’s the experience of the gesture, it’s the experience of the breath that one must distinguish." Extracts from pp. 80-87