Sébastien Plassard

Sébastien Plassard’s pictures turn up on editorials, book covers, and film-festival posters, usually without a contour line to lean on. Contrasting cells of orange and blue, plus a few well-placed shadows, do the job of an outline. “I look for a balance between colours and shapes and a contradiction, a tension in the narration,” he has said.

The day starts on paper with a rough composition, then moves to the screen for color and texture. The hand-drawn start stays visible. He is not hiding the pencil under a polish. He is keeping the first decision in the file so the later color cannot pretend it invented the scene. Scenes tilt toward quiet absurdity: businessmen fighting up a spiral stair, a boxer knocking a head clean off, a house that remembers Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr.

Blimps, Victorian aircraft, 1920s race cars, and a man on a mechanical horse-bike wander through as if they had always lived there. The machines are not research for a period drama. They are how the picture finds a temperature. Warm orange against cool blue is the weather. The shadow is the hinge. “When I draw, I am in quest of poetry,” he shares. “I look for a singular atmosphere with fantasy, with absurdity… I want the picture to talk by itself like a full language.”

Editorials, book covers, and film-festival posters are the public rooms. The private method is flatter: no contour, orange against blue, a shadow that pretends to be a line. Paper gets the composition. The screen gets color and texture. The pencil decision stays in the file.

Businessmen on a spiral stair are one kind of tension. A boxer knocking a head off is another. Keaton’s house in Steamboat Bill Jr. is the third, a falling wall that is also a joke. Blimps, Victorian aircraft, 1920s race cars, and the man on a mechanical horse-bike keep walking through as if the century had not been sorted. He has said he wants balance between colours and shapes, and a contradiction in the narration. He has also said he is in quest of poetry, of a singular atmosphere with fantasy and absurdity, of a picture that talks by itself like a full language.

You do not need a caption. Stand in the orange and the blue until the contradiction starts speaking. The stair, the punch, the falling house: each one is a sentence with the last word left off on purpose. Look at the missing outline first. Then notice the tension was the subject all along. Not a period reconstruction. Orange, blue, a missing outline, and a machine that should not be able to walk.