Pacific Compositions is a collaborative project from husband and wife team Gilles and Camille Saint-Gilles. Educated in France in architecture and design, the couple has constructed major architectural monuments throughout the world. Operating as “total architects”, Gilles Saint-Gilles fabricates every detail of their final structures, from hand-made bricks and ceramic light fixtures to custom doorways and tiles. The results are intricate, harmonious interlocking designs -
both testaments to their French and Moorish influences and reflections, in style and patina,
of the surrounding architecture and landscape. (keep reading further bellow)
Working out of their Panama studio, Gilles Saint-Gilles brings some of these ideas and sensibilities to their innovative painting practice, integrating the language of mosaic and tapestry with an interest in abstraction and the emotional possibilities of color. Gilles cites the Paris riots of 1968 as the initial turning point in his thought process, when he sought a way to symbolize the breakdown of the social fabric and the need to restructure it anew. He created his first woven piece at that time—weaving, lacing and knotting together disparate elements—asserting a methodic artistic control while allowing for a third, unknown element to emerge. While inspired by Paul Klee, Miro and Matisse, Gilles explorations were a direct response to his contemporary world. (keep reading further bellow)
This is also true of Gilles Saint-Gilles current project, which picks up the thread of these early explorations. Gilles and Camille each produce a painting on paper or canvas then shred it into horizontal or vertical strips. They then weave the separate works together to create their final work—now an expression of a society fascinated and disrupted by technical evolution and a digital world awash in the language of pixels. While still intent on creating innovative new forms out of their close collaboration, their work in the painting studio is looser and more improvised than their architectural work together, inviting chance to intersect with design. The work is both a deconstruction and a reconstruction, this time to find new creative possibilities within the act of painting.
