LandE scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
LandEscape meets
Francine Gourguechon
An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape @ europe. com
After having worked in many mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and mosaic art, artist Francine Gourguechon focused on mosaic art as her primary direction. In her body of works that we ' ll be discussing in the following pages, she effectively challenges the relationship between the viewers ' perceptual parameters and their cultural substratum to induce them to elaborate personal associations, offering them a multilayered aesthetic experience. One of the most impressive aspects of Gourguechon ' s work is the way it accomplishes a successful attempt to create a channel of communication between the perceptual sphere and imagination, to go beyond the dichotomy between Tradition and Contemporariness. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production.
Hello Francine and welcome to LandEscape: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background in photography and painting? You have a solid formal training and you attended the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago: how did your studies influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?
My studies at the Art Institute of Chicago serves as the foundation of my art making. As a student you are introduced to considering everything you see in terms of line, form, color etc. and then you forever see this way. However, studying art mediums of all kinds goes on all through life and is an ongoing inspiration. Travel, books, museums, galleries, workshops, family and politics are the research that somehow accumulate in your mind and end up in the art you finally make.
Your approach rejects any conventional classification: it is very personal and