Lou Olmos Arsenne, a contemporary artistPOPrain

I had the pleasure of speaking for a while with Lou Olmos Arsenne, a painter from a winter sports resort in the Alps and living in Paris for eight years now. Very intrigued by his painting, I discovered his paintings on Instagram and took a strong interest in his latest series.

Before Fine Arts: high school, university then applied arts prep

Lou was a high school student in Grenoble in a “Performing Arts” section and regularly practiced theater. Once he obtained his baccalaureate, it was the capital that called him and he went there with the aim of completing a degree in Modern Literature. The university system does not suit him and he decides to quit.

With his unique personality, his collage work and his particular oral skills, he was taken to Glacière, a preparatory class for Applied Arts at the Paris City Hall.

He didn't start painting right away. Although already interested in color, design, scenography – he especially practices collage as “an artistic tourist” he said to me, who “lis lazy” to start another medium.

It was an exercise given by his teacher Florence Reymond in which he had to paint a French landscape, which put him on the path to painting which he has not left since. He likes everything.

“CIt was hyper sensory, putting things next to each other, the flat areas, the movements. It's really easy, the super simple thing.”

Once the prep school is finished, Lou enters the Beaux-Arts in Paris to deepen his learning of painting. His portfolio mainly includes paintings made on cardboard, like the one below.

The Fine Arts of Paris

Lou starts with painters Bernard Piffaretti, Sylvie Fanchon and Dominique Figarella (P2F atelier) all of which have a very conceptual painting.

The subjects of his paintings are compositions of imagined worlds. The desire to change technique and “learn to really paint” emerges in our painter. Thus, he changed workshops during his second year. We will also see that he never took comfort in a technique or a medium; his practice is constantly evolving with the aim of surpassing himself.

Below, a painting which represents this period within the P2F workshop.

It was Nina Childress who would mentor our painter for the next four years. Its iconography intrigues him; he particularly appreciates his choice of colors which remind him of the 80s and his sharp subjects.

Figuration begins to appear in his work; for example with the series of drawings below, produced in 2020.

The appearance of these characters emerges from these “blurry” spaces in which they find themselves. Later, Lou will tell me that he never really knew where he should be – like his characters. This composition is reminiscent of a collage: the angles are clear and the layers appear superimposed.

He slowly begins to draw inspiration from photos, but “without affecting the realism which bores me too much”.

Leave the workshop

Lou wanders through the Fine Arts to meet other teachers. He begins to work on large formats, with a slower gesture, to confront other pictorial compositions. Meaning was not a priority in his work at this time.

Painting is seen as a physical exercise; Lou's method is to stick the canvas to his wall to work on it with force. The lightness of the line, of the color, however, does not allow the slightest effort to show through. It almost looks like a watercolor as the colors blend together.

At the same time as this gesture emerges, Lou paints everyday scenes that could be described as “non-subject”. He tries to animate objects with these warm color palettes and these almost poetic reliefs.

Pré-Saint-Gervais and 5th year diploma

In order to prepare for her master's degree, Lou rents a workshop in Pré-Saint-Gervais. This large format portrait was created, inspired by a photograph.

When he talks to me about it, Lou confides in me that he finds something “vulgar”, almost caricatured, that he didn't like at first. The background work is intentionally blurred, in the same approach of flat areas close to reality without revealing its secret.

These color spots are there to try to master a perspective that Lou says he does not have. This is surely the surrealist side of his work. Like in a dream, the background is there but we cannot clearly discern it.

Two days before his diploma installation, Lou painted Ssouvenirthe table I chose to open this article. He painted it in two nights, almost in one go: “This painting was easy” he told me. It represents him and his brother, teenage skiers. At the moment of turning an important page in his life, Lou paints a page of his past life which brought him a lot of joy. It is as if he painted with counter-stroke, as we will see with his paintings in Hamburg.

What I like about this painting is the detail painted in the foreground as if the focus was on this first skier – who is in fact the painter.

It was “the most important painting” in Lou's graduation certificate. We can't see it in the photo above but he uses light-reflecting silver pigments: “I want my characters to be American pop stars, that they all make the Super Bowl”.

Residence in Hamburg

“I’m never really going to take inspiration from where I am.”

Arriving in Hamburg, Lou painted Paris and his photos taken in the evening. This is almost like a film editor's approach: the artist searches for his shots to give them a place again.

Nostalgia is not excluded from these moments of analysis where Lou remembers times gone by. The painting below is inspired by a photo taken in the evening in a luxurious workshop at Paris City Hall.

The emergence of the figure of the skier

During the second part of his residency in Hamburg, Lou changes workspace. He then came up with the idea of ​​working on a series of portraits of skiers in a very rigorous way: “I said to myself, ok, now I have to do a hundred”. Once again, in the personality of the artist, the imprint of competition is felt; imposing work discipline on yourself makes the difference.

“Every day I had to do one… I mustn't lose… It's uncomfortable to be an artist sometimes. It's not: I get up, I have my tea in my studio then I think for two hours about what I'm going to paint. It’s more like that when you leave school, that’s all over.”

Some skiers smile, others don't. Lou speaks of “photosensitivity” which is a term whose use can be appreciated here; light being the current that emanates from the artist at the moment of the very act of painting.

And what’s next?

Lou is thinking of leaving Paris. He is affiliated with the Regala gallery in Arles. He does not make a sufficient living from his art and although they regularly sell drawings, this does not necessarily allow him to stay in Paris.

Always in a process of improvement, he works on at least one painting per day. What I particularly like with Lou is the possibility of following his line on his networks in particular: vYou can find his works daily on his Instagram account.

Gaïa Tourpe