Tableau clous 1969

Here we have Bernard Aubertin’s ‘Tableau clous’, a painting done with nails, but is it really a painting? The whole surface is a field of red, or maybe a red field, made of countless tiny nail heads. Up close, you see the texture, a kind of brutalist impasto. It’s like he's painting with objects, making color physical. I find myself wondering if Aubertin hammered in each nail individually, or used some kind of machine? There’s a tension between the handmade and the industrial here. Look at the way the light catches the heads of the nails; each one reflecting in its own way. It’s like a living surface, full of subtle variations and shifting patterns. Is it about the color, the process, or the materials? Maybe it's about all of those things at once. Aubertin reminds us that art is always a conversation, a dialogue between ideas and materials.