Man’s presence in nature and / or painting couldn’t be better expressed. The landscape is humanized effortlessly : man or woman doesn’t modify it by imposing the architecture of its forms…

(Jean-Pascal Léger)

Recently, when in the same conversation, the names of both Pierre Tal Coat and Toni Grand were uttered, the harmonics of a same chord suddenly resonated within me. As if the distant echo of a thing both known and silenced at the same time escaped from these two notes played together. As if a common « sympathetic » vision of the world and nature preexisted at the source of their respective work. Besides, addressing Tal Coat’s work, Henri Maldiney talks of a « fundamental relationship between Tal Coat and the universe that isn’t aggressive but sympathetic ».

As is said of sympathetic chords, those we do not strike but simply vibrate by resonance - by sympathy - due to their sole proximity to the strike chords. Tony Grand’s work works in a similar way. Confronted one to the other, both of these works benefit from that same relation.

For Tal Coat, as well as Toni Grand, any thing destined to oblivion should be retained, kept, but with the same concern of never over-burdening what isn’t obvious. A similar approach to silence as well, main requirement to access. A formal experience of a commemoration, of a permanence. A relic of that which is remembered. The sculptor and the painter strive to birth the contained form, to let it appear instead of bringing it to light. To make « the invisible there » visible (cf Maldiney).