Pictorial fragrances

      The works gathered under the title Picturalités occupy a unique place in Dominique Dupray's career. They do not correspond to a single discipline but rather to a field of tensions where painting, photography, and photographic painting engage in a dialogue without hierarchy.

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      For a long time, the multidisciplinary artist remained aloof from flat planes of color, associating them, without real examination, with an elementary form of coloring. The Gracieuses series marked a decisive shift. Driven by a taste for risk and a desire for radical simplification, the surface became a space for self-affirmation. A deliberate frontality with a sovereign geometry underscores a rejection of unnecessary sophistication: the subject emerges in the self-evidence of color and the rigor of construction.

   The almost architectural precision of the spaces, the balance of light, are the result of a deliberate choice. Everything is given from the outset. The gradations themselves are built up in distinct steps, generating an internal vibration. This organization by masses and rhythms perhaps betrays a musical rather than a pictorial approach, with its articulations, modulations, tension, and resolution.

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     At the other end of the spectrum, photography is never considered a simple recording. In projects such as Parfums de situations (Scents of Situations), Dominique Dupray prefers a conscious reconstruction to a documentary approach. The scene is conceived, framed, and constrained. The harsh lighting, the bodies placed in a confined space, and, in certain specific cases, the choice of deliberately ordinary equipment all contribute to a rejection of virtuosity. The image retains a raw quality that prevents any complacent aestheticization.