"A violet canyon. Electric wires on urban poles that draw geometric shapes. Deserted streets where some houses gloom grey while others blossom orange, echoing the traffic lights of a few parked cars. Large, white roads. Tar. High, curved palm trees, whose weird shadows cut their own shapes into the landscape. Thierry Lefort’s Los Angeles paintings immediately take you in. They bring you into a universe that anyone who has ever lived in this city would define as equally familiar and strikingly new. Ten years ago, the French native painter took a one-way flight to L.A. He was busy teaching and exhibiting in Paris when not traveling for exhibitions in China, Russia, and other parts of the world. But he wanted a new start, a new environment to immerse into. I don’t remember why I chose this city. I had never been here, and I knew nobody”, explains the artist whom I meet in his studio in North Hollywood. He wandered from one neighborhood to another, intrigued by the megalopolis’s peculiar environment, that strange mix of wild nature, high-tech or derelict buildings, large highways, and empty streets. The unique light in the city amazed him, with its striking contrasts that draw everything it touches like a razor blade.
Even in Provence, there isn’t this kind of light,” he exults, referring to the famous region of France that his master Cézanne devoted his almost entire life to painting. Like the XIX-century artist, Lefort is a passionate observer who just can’t stop working. He dedicated three years of his life to a junkyard in the Paris suburb, waking up at 5 a.m. every day to go there with his tools until night came, noticing every little detail, from every angle. Los Angeles became his obsession. He went, came back, and back many times. At least four to five months every year. He restlessly explored the city, noticing all these elements that we, Angelenos, don’t have time to stop and look at, as we are constantly driving somewhere. A concrete building that most people would find random but appears to him as an attractive shape in the city landscape. A crossroad. Palm trees." Yann Perreau
For more info on available works, please email hereiselsewhereart@gmail.com