In a review posted on artnet.com, the critic Stephen Maine seemed to sum up Jacques Flechemuller’s allure best — "To account for the appeal of Jacques Flechemuller’s darkly comic vision would be like trying to explain how a joke works." Working in a purely classic, painterly mode, Flechemuller takes inspiration from life’s little pleasures and advertising imagery, then turns the amp up to 11.
The centerpiece of the current exhibit of recent paintings at PDX Contemporary Art is "Trainers" (2004) a lovingly rendered portrait of a ginuea pig being held up, for show, by a young girl. As darling as the pet may be, the viewer can’t help but notice, and giggle, at the fact that Flechemuller has given him a pair of training pants to wear. And this is all without mentioning scale—the painting is 40 x 28 inches in size. Other examples of Flechemuller’s whimsy are "Birthday Boy" (2003) depicting a boy with wide googley eyes blowing out candles on a cake, and “My Best Friend” (2001) of a german shephard wearing a helmut.
A Frenchman, Jacques Flechemuller —pronounced flesh-mule-er- was born in Monaco and resides half the year in Brooklyn and the other half in Southern France. His work has been exhibited regularly, throughout Western Europe since the early 1970’s and in the United States since the mid-1980’s. Flechemuller’s work is included in the esteemed colletions of Janco Dada Museum, Hof-Hacarmel, Israel, FNAC, Musee d’art Moderne, Paris France and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
