Valentin Alberton
Egg tempera on wood — organic forms, between flesh and abstraction
Information
Based in
Fontainebleau, France
Status
Avanvue selection
Medium
Egg tempera on wood
Overview
Valentin Alberton paints with egg tempera on wood, an ancient technique he has made his own. From an initially free gesture emerge organic forms, close to bodies and flesh, which he then shapes with light until a figure is revealed. He tells nothing, he questions the matter. His paintings unsettle and seem familiar, and one never sees the same thing twice: we search for faces in them, we sense presences. His discovery of tempera marked a turning point and gave his series a new coherence, on the border between the figurative and the abstract.
My view
I chose him in August 2026.
Standing before his paintings, you think you recognize a body, a face, then the image shifts and becomes something else. Nothing is fixed. The tempera, matte and soft, makes it all feel almost alive. This is what I like about his work: you linger in front of it, slightly unsettled, trying to understand what you are seeing. I met him at Place du Marché Sainte-Catherine. He explained tempera to me.
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