Background Image

Our glance at

Daniel Guillotin

Pic Image Image Image


Daniel Guillotin

See the works
From 05/01/2009to 01/04/2009
Few months ago, we had the chance to discover the wonderful work of Daniel Guillotin, etcher in Caen. Thanks to the 12 online etchings, we are sure a lot of you will share with us the same pleasure to be introduced to his imaginary world both very sensitive and meaningful, but also to be meeting with his determined expression in respect to a very strong rigour and an glance that is calling for nuances.
The artist is 48, born in Caen where he currently lives and works. He graduates in 1984 from the Fine Arts Institute in Caen and creates immediatly a joint graphic design agency. Daniel Guillotin satisfies his addiction for images, semiology, letters, the relationship text-image and the composition. In 1995, after this first experience, he joins friends in another agency, still active.

In this technological world where time is burning like straw, Daniel works for him, at night. Depending on the season, it can be writing, music … and painting. But something goes wrong. Something or rather someone ! « Pierre Soulages fascinates me to the point of inhibition » says Daniel. A sort of excessive paralysis. All the emotions, all the feelings that I discover with him seem to drain me out a little bit more each time. Like if he was speaking for myself. . I just have the impression that I have nothing left to say. He will never know it but he took me years to forget him ! With time, Daniel does without him, he just does.

Five years ago, he decides to stand back with his job, working less for the others and more for him; during a year he builds his own workshop, sets up an association where adults are guided in their expression of fine arts. It will be « L’Atelier du haut de la rue » (). Daniel Guillotin creates his own space, sets up an etcher’s press, blotters, an inking layout; during few months, he learns etching again in Erik Bersou’s atelier (etcher in Normandy), before etching takes hold of him definitely.
In his work, Daniel is always obsessed with the idea of making the etcher’s tool unseen. According to him, that is what abstraction needs. When he speaks about the tool, he thinks about the movements it reveals. Too real. Probably an attraction for dream, thought and simply imagination. ». « Work we have left to do in front of a suggestion ». Rapidly, he will leave aside the standard tools, indicating movements, to imagine and develop different techniques: traditional and opened to experimentation.

Daniel Guillotin works a lot with textures. He knows the pleasure of touch. Make no mistake about it, he likes color, he likes it when it is almost there. He has an appointment with light, the one that comes from dark.

Mysterious work, most of the time accomplished in a vertical space (meaning standing up !), secrete gateways for the joy of forgetting or just to live in harmony.


Discover all the "Glance at..."