Jacques
Pourcher

Jacques Pourcher

(Chamalières (France), 1950, lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand)
Born into a family that gave an important place to art, Jacques Pourcher taught himself painting. His numerous visits to exhibitions and museums as well as the study of reproductions of paintings have familiarized him with artistic practices.
Interested in the interactions between painting, music and philosophy, Jacques Pourcher paid tribute to Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy.
In 1970, at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, he attended concerts by American composers (including John Cage). This music touched him deeply and gave his work a new impulse that led him towards minimal art, a form he still appreciates and practices today.
Other composers also enter into his work: Jean-Yves Bosseur, Morton Feldman, Gérard Grisey, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Éliane Radigue, Giacinto Scelsi and of course John Cage.
From 1980, he introduced traditional papers from the Far East (Nepal, Japan, Korea, China) into his work. He assembles them into subtle collages that play with the diversity of textures. Often structured in horizontal bands, his compositions seek to capture and vary the points of attachment of light. His colour palette is restricted to a variation of light tones (white, beige, ochre) depending on the papers used.
Jacques Pourcher also worked on an artist’s book: James Joyce. He illustrated and calligraphy various texts by the writer (2006, Zurich).
He has exhibited in Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, USA… His works are in several private and public collections, including the Cabinet d’art graphique of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC) of Auvergne and the Art Museum of Western Virginia (USA).
In 2016, a monograph is dedicated to him: Jacques Pourcher, painter among composers by Lenka Stranska (Éditions Delatour). She writes: Using a know-how of his invention, Pourcher fragments the surface of the support into microparticles which, at the macroscopic scale of our vision, represent the sound vibrations captured at a given moment. The intensity of the luminous colorations, all subtle, is modulated in response to the delicate musical nuances to the limit of silence – or invisibility – like a quest to reach infinity by seeking to grasp the imperceptible.
Jacques Pourcher’s bibliography also includes texts by art critics, including Jean-Yves Bosseur, Philippe Piguet and Lydia Harambourg.