Hélène Delprat Sans titre (Untitled), 2016-2017

Sans titre (Untitled) is a pencil and ink collage work on paper.

In the center one sees a cut-out image, perhaps from a magazine, of a forest in autumn. This idyllic scene is disrupted by the ink drawing that extends from the bottom of the tree trunks as roots, a hatchet, and a splatter of blood. In pencil, a figure lies decapitated with their head having rolled slightly away from its body. The head spits blood, and a tree drawn in pencil seems to also drip with blood from an unknown source.

After finding success in the 1980s and 1990s for a distinctive style of figurative painting, Delprat turned her focus to video, theater, installations and projects for radio. In the late aughts, she returned to her painting practice, which has since been shaped by an encyclopedic research process to accumulate a remarkable archive of sources she records across various mediums, including her online blog of images and writings, ‘Days.’ Mining those archives, Delprat’s recent works are characterized by decontextualized images and texts; her seemingly non-sensical narratives induce viewers to draw their own conceptual associations and locate provocative parallels within her oeuvre. This work, for example, was created as the artist listened to the radio, allowing different images and thoughts to flow through her conscious and subconscious into the piece.