Drawing, a practice Christian Lhopital adopted early in his career, has become the core of the artist’s work. Crayon, watercolors, ink wash, collage, acrylic, graphite powder, gesso – he picks from a wide range of techniques, choosing with great care, and most often combining them. Series by series, he switches between formats with free-flowing strokes, welcoming random occurrences and accidents. He sometimes creates wall drawings like the one presented at Les Abattoirs, the starting point of which is the large Spéciales 3 drawing (2009).

Using recurrent and obsessive motifs, such as bodiless heads or headless bodies, eyes floating as if reduced to themselves, Christian Lhopital creates a world where unspeakable fears and unruly desires arise. An uncertain world, as opaque as it is fragile. Across his work, a disconcerting inner theatre comes to life starring a world of funny or terrifying little creatures that seem to pop straight out of a dream or nightmare.

For the final smallscale works of the Fixe face silence series, showing at Le Confort des étranges gallery, and part of what the artist calls his recouvrements (re-coverings), he drew on images from the daily press. "The piece starts with the choice of photos of protagonists looking at me, staring fixedly at me, living or dead, famous or otherwise. The images are covered in white paint, then I restore that gaze in pencil. The paint covers the surface of the image. The figures become phantomatic, spectral."

At Les Abattoirs, he will create a wall drawing. Fragile and ephemeral, it is the polar opposite of a mural, yet another variation in his elusive fantasy world. Christian Lhopital emphasizes, "The more I draw, the freer I feel. Drawing takes me wherever it pleases."