As part of a year-long exhibition programme celebrating the 150th anniversary of Constantin Brancusi’s birth, Galerie Negropontes presents a solo exhibition by Étienne Moyat, whose work resonates deeply with the sculptor’s legacy through an essential relationship with wood, gesture, form, and temporality.

For Étienne Moyat, creation is never viewed as an endpoint, but rather as an ongoing journey within his artistic practice. Mindful of his connection to the past, the artist situates his work within a continuum where gesture, material, and memory are inseparable. Once a path is chosen, the rest unfolds naturally—a path that remains intentionally open and in a state of evolution, free from fixed finality. Trained as a master cabinetmaker, Moyat works directly from trees sawn into slabs, following the principle of taille directe (direct carving). Much like Brancusi, he views wood not merely as a material but as a living substance imbued with temporality, history, and energy. He engages with the wood through carving, burning, brushing, and painting—a respectful, attentive dialogue with what the medium itself reveals. His use of the chainsaw, a paradoxically liberating tool, allows for a gesture that is at once free, instinctive, and precisely controlled. The exhibition brings together a collection of carved panels and wooden sculptures, where surfaces are traversed by fluid lines, layers, and rhythmic patterns. These works bear witness to a conscious, measured practice in which technique recedes to make way for sensory experience. They exist within a transient and fragile logic, rooted in a continuous search for equilibrium. Punctuating this sculptural body of work, the exhibition also introduces a selection of recent paintings—a new development in the artist’s practice. Approached with profound freedom of gesture and emotion, these paintings extend the explorations of his sculpture, investigating the relationship between movement, rhythm, and time through a different medium. Painting becomes a space for experimentation, where energy circulates in new ways while remaining deeply connected to his sculptural concerns. Drawing inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism, and Primitivism, Moyat works on a large scale with a spontaneous, instinctive approach. Vibrant colours, thick impasto, and rhythmic compositions transform the canvas into a field of sensory exploration that resonates with his work in wood.

Whether carving or painting, Étienne Moyat explores our connection to the living world, to space, and to time. His work exists in a direct relationship with material and gesture, inviting the viewer into a deeply emotional experience.