In his text Aveuglante lumière (Blinding Light) [1], American art historian Jonathan Crary offers a reading of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s painting Regulus (1828) through the lens of a sensory experience of blindness and dazzling light, which he connects to the origins of abstraction (in Turner’s painting, the figure of Regulus—who was tortured by being forced to stare at the sun—is, in fact, not depicted). The act of staring at the sun at the risk of burning one’s retina has been a source of torment for both scientists and painters. Crary draws a parallel between Regulus’s fate and that of three scientists who were friends of Turner, including Joseph Plateau, whose vision deteriorated as a result of their research on retinal persistence. This very experience of retinal persistence and dazzling light is what Nicolas Delprat evokes in his James series—a body of work born from his encounter with an installation by Light and Space pioneer James Turrell, where the sensation of an artwork (a perceptual experience) and its memory gave rise to a series of paintings that are as abstract as they are concrete. Delprat’s paintings begin with a radical gesture: the uniform covering of the white canvas with black paint. From the depths of this blackness, the artist gradually brings the painting into light through successive layers. He orchestrates a subtle play of vibrations, where the light spectrum emerges and retinal vertigo takes hold. In the diptych James put back 2 and 3, the luminous areas on the right and left of each painting invite us to reconsider the trembling moment between the light and dark zones, where the image blurs and pink tones multiply. Masking traces act as clues to the pictorial process, revealing the layered construction of the painting (from blackness to the ascent of light). In this perspectiveless space, the eye loses itself in the color’s vibrations. The luminous zones, like a contemporary Regulus, reference that ghost of perception that is the residual imprint left by an artwork. They open up a space for projection in the viewer’s mind.

      This notion of spatial disorientation is further explored in the Lost Control series. Here, a recognizable motif emerges: the window, a space of projection but also a threshold between interior and exterior, and a framing device frequently used in landscape painting, traditionally offering a perspective view (veduta). However, this window, rather than opening onto the world, is rendered literally without perspective (in the Duchampian tradition of Fresh Widow, 1920). It metaphorically evokes a cinematic imaginary or even a grid (another key motif in abstract painting), where the blur of the pictorial image creates a space of projection—akin to the halo cast by a projector onto a screen or an optical device awaiting focus before an image appears. Like an interrupted pan shot, the way each painting connects to the next reinforces the serial effect. In 1971, for the Pier 18 project on a New York pier, initiated by curator Willoughby Sharp, conceptual artist Jan Dibbets, in collaboration with photographer Harry Shunk, created two photographic series with different protocols but similar effects: in the first, a sequence of 12 photographs maintained the same framing while mechanically modulating the light from overexposure to underexposure; in the second, the light naturally faded as the sun set, altering the perception of the same framing. In Nicolas Delprat’s work, however, it is not the variations of light that draw the eye but rather a slow movement—like a tracking shot—an experience of distance, as the black zone at the bottom of the painting gradually diminishes. Each opaque, milky-white blured rectangle resembles a film frame emptied of representation—a blind spot where memory can dissolve.

      The recent Dynamiques series accelerates this movement. This time, the artist begins with the white surface (and does not build up color over a black base). The series was initiated during the lockdown, at a time when the idea of a contaminated surface permeated the media landscape. The paintings unfold in layers, creating the impression of a horizon from which an explosion of levitating particles seems to erupt, after the battle. These splashes on the canvas surface recall images of catastrophe, like the explosive finale of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, where everything appears to be suspended. In these disturbances of vision and memory that Delprat invites us to experience, the eye wanders into a pictorial space stretching to infinity.

Audrey Illouz

Art critic and curator

[1] See Jonathan Crary, « Aveuglante lumière » in Serge Lemoine, Pascal Rousseau, The Origins of Abstraction (1800-1914), Paris, musée d’Orsay and RMN, 2003 pp.105-109