Admiring the world of cartography and other forms of pop art illustrations, Pascal Leyder offers his own very personal interpretation of them, combining moments from his private life with a vision of the universe outside of time.

To say that drawing is as vital as breathing to an artist may sound like a cliche, but for Leyder it is true. Everyday, at home or at La “S” Grand Atelier, where he is a resident, he tirelessly covers large sheets of paper using felt-tip pens, swiftly and insatiably. Inspired by multiple works, maps or plans found in the library of La “S” Grand Atelier - Centre d’Art Brut & Contemporain, he uses them as a source or matrix for invitations to a journey. He may add éléments from his daily life and emotions that nourish him, including those stimulated by friendship and love. The first draft is always the last. The artist never reworks or corrects his drawings. He covers the entire surface of his support abundantly, multiplying the lines or magnifying his own signature, with which he occasionally begins to work. Leyder’s tastes are eclectic. He doesn’t shy away from comics and graphic novels in popular culture. Quite the opposite. He has exchanged drawings with the artist Pakito Bonilo for several years. He also loves the Harry Potter films, which he goes to see at the cinema with his family. A child born in the age of screens, used to the moving images of television and tablets, he has learnt to observe the different modes of representation. He scrutinises them or extracts certain details from them, although his rapid, vigorous or raw lines may not always reproduce them frontally in his own work. Leyder sketches

figures and crowds whose faces are scrawled, as well as frank, assertive, quasi-robotised characters. He also depicts animals or hybrid creatures, adding phrases with mysterious meanings… When he draws inspiration more directly from maps, he enhances islands and mountains, loses himself in vast ocean spaces so as to recreate, in his mind, the most profound legends. Plans inspire innumerable buildings invaded by colour from felt-tips or ink. Thus the whorls and lines multiply in this fluid movement that seems to accompany a stream of uninterrupted thoughts. Yet any interpretation has to be made here by the spectator, since Leyder says very little in words, preferring to express himself through the medium of drawing.

(text Marie Maertens).