L’Essentiel, 2015–ongoing

Process-based work, oil on canvas, 73 paintings in its current state.

L’Essentiel is an ongoing painting project begun in 2015. Conceived as an inventory of possible skies, it develops through a protocol involving one hundred oil paintings on canvases of varying formats. Each painting records a distinct configuration of light, colour and atmosphere while remaining part of a single evolving work.

The project currently consists of seventy-three paintings. Once the hundredth canvas has been completed, each new sky will be painted directly over one of the existing images. The number of supports will remain fixed, while the visible state of the work will continue to change. Earlier skies will disappear beneath subsequent layers, persisting through documentation, memory and the material thickness of the paintings.

L’Essentiel therefore exists simultaneously as a collection of autonomous paintings and as one long-term work shaped by accumulation, limitation and irreversible transformation.

Studio view, L’Essentiel, Långban, 2025. Photo © Ludivine Thomas-Andersson

Complete current state – 73 paintings

Ciel 202408211545-0072 — L’Essentiel, 2024

Oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm Studio view, Ciel 202408211545-0072, project L’Essentiel, Långban, 2025. ©Ludivine Thomas-Andersson

Tensions, Social Structures and Research

L’Essentiel is structured through the dependence of one hundred paintings that are both autonomous and inseparable from the system to which they belong. Each painting is a complete work, with its own pictorial value, material presence and history. Yet the protocol determines its place, its future and, eventually, its possible disappearance.

During the first phase, each new painting enlarges the work. Once the number of one hundred is reached, continuation will no longer be possible through accumulation. Every new image will require the covering of an existing one.

The tension of the protocol does not lie in eliminating failed or insignificant paintings. It lies in making accomplished works subject to a system that may demand their disappearance. They are not covered because they have lost their value, but while they remain fully valid as works.

Creation and concealment consequently become inseparable. A new painting can appear only by making another inaccessible. Yet the earlier work is not entirely destroyed: its support remains, its material persists beneath the new layers, and its former state survives through documentation and memory. The work continues by withdrawing its own visible results.

This dependency gives material form to a broader social tension. Contemporary culture assigns moral value to labour, perseverance and effort, while recognition is more often attached to visible success, measurable results, financial value and continued relevance. Labour itself is not necessarily what is rewarded; its effects must remain perceptible and socially legible.

This contradiction is particularly acute within artistic practice, where long-term development coexists with demands for continuous production, novelty and visibility. Earlier works may continue to exist materially while losing their actuality, circulation or public presence. The accumulation of labour does not guarantee cumulative recognition.

L’Essentiel does not represent these conditions from a distance. It constructs a system in which they become operative. The time invested is real, the technical development is real, and the paintings produced possess value. Yet the protocol separates effort from the lasting visibility of its results. Perseverance does not simply lead towards completion; it leads towards the point at which continuation requires sacrifice.

The work therefore asks what remains when an image disappears but its material persists; whether an artwork can retain its identity through the replacement of its visible states; and whether a finite structure can sustain an ongoing process without either ending it or expanding indefinitely.

Through repetition, dependency and irreversible transformation, L’Essentiel turns social tensions into material conditions and philosophical questions into consequences that must be lived within the work.

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