At the beginning of 2023, Claude Viallat received an unexpected request from from the Ceysson & Bénétière gallery to welcome a duo of artist’s books publishers. He had a busy schedule of exhibitions and thought that he wouldn’t be able to commit to a new book project, yet:

Quelqu’un propose un tissu Un tissu et l’idée d’un livre :

Quelque chose comome si d’un coup

Un objet se trouvait là,

qu’on peut ramasser.

James Sacré, invited by the artist, recounts the birth of the idea in these lines, one of the 16 poems in the book. In the summer of 2023, the artist received 12 pieces of natural linen fabric in different colours and began to paint them. These paintings were cut into rectangles that form the different pages of the various copies of the book, which have been assembled in such a way that each copy, made up exclusively of original paintings, is unique in its colour combination.

For the packaging, Claude Viallat reserved a very personal touch by proposing bamboo trunks from the Cévennes, a place where he had worked in his youth. And so “Quelque chose qu’on n’avait pas prévu” [Something that we did not expect] was born.