Jérôme Boutterin originally studied as an architect, then studied art, then returned to architecture again. My heroes were architects, like Mies. He admired architecture for its ability to change reality, and kept stopping his investment in art because he was confused about what it was that was at stake when one made art. Finally, I found that working as an artist, or the reason for working, is to discover what the meaning of working is. He has said that the principles governing architects are different: artists have a different rapport with reality.

In Boutterin’s gridded paintings, which he began making in 1999, there are two stages. The first concerns the mind and involves a method to discard the subjective by making a ground on the ground like a farmer ‘sowing’ all colors in the lines, but preserving the original ground in the intercises. In the second stage many different decisions take place. Boutterin’s problem with abstract painting is that the idea of spontaneity is false, that there is no innocence of choices. When he makes these paintings, he paints on the painted grid when it is still wet, so that the strokes pull up the painted ground, contaminating the memory of the ground with the improvisational brushstrokes.

Boutterin’s drawings continue his concerns with the idea of the white ground and the fallacy of “purity of intention” of traditional paintings. He first uses pencil to automatically put lines down, staying very close to the paper so he cannot see the overall composition. Later, when he returns to the drawing with paint he only paints on the drawn lines so that the paint is immediately dirtied, made impure, by the graphite from the previous marks. Boutterin sees all his methods as escapes from the painting’s seduction by the false virginal white.

In subsequent years Boutterin has developed a number of new bodies of work, some figurative, others abstract. He continues making all of his bodies of work. All of the paintings are in discussion with one another. One series does not succeed the other but only advances the range of paintings that he does. Many of his most recent works have been inspired by his visits to the Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris. Bouttterin’s boldly gestural abstractions evoke the epical, imaginative imagery of this noted fin de siecle painter with a remarkable economy. – Joe Fyfe 2005

Jérôme Boutterin permits the viewer to experience painting as a kind of transitional site... Stylistically, the paintings unite Minimalist structure with Abstract-Expressionist gesture, but aspects of Boutterin's work reminded me more strongly of the prevalence of semitransparency and layering in much recent French architecture. Although there were debts here, in particular to Albert Oehlen and Bernard Frize, Boutterin is free of those painters' sometimes chilly irony. His refreshing, oddly ruminative work strikes a perfect balance between intellect and materiality." - Joe Fyfe