Excerpt from Clothilde Morette's text
For the exhibition Mise en Demeure, Interface, Dijon, 2013
Translated by Lucy Pons, 2016

While mediums may vary in Frédéric Houvert's work (painting, sculpture, photography, and drawing), ornament still remains the central element of his practice. The patterns he uses are always inspired by the plant world and remind us of the intrinsic relationship between decorative arts and fine arts throughout history. Ornaments were symbols of order and perfection from Antiquity to the Renaissance and testified to an artist's technique and mastery of materials; as such, they were subjected to rigorous organisation. While the aesthetic power of patterns remains very present in Frédéric Houvert's work, the rigour of compositions has given way to intricately dynamic layouts. What seems like order in the first place reveals apparent chaos, pulling his drawing towards abstraction. Leaves and flowers dissolve in the layering of patterns, questioning their very materiality, which seems to break apart on the canvas. The softness of the pastel tones is relegated to the background, infusing the works with a sense of timelessness. Modernity and tradition come together in the way the artist treats motifs, which bring to mind bourgeois  – although somewhat timeworn – interiors. For the art historian Alois Riegl, ornament was more than a simple accessory reducible to its most elementary form. Its creation is only made possible by the “will to make art” (Kunstwollen), by using the artistic act to transcend reality. This is precisely how Frédéric Houvert's work must be understood – as a constant manipulation of reality through the figure of patterns, thus opening it up to new forms of existence: those of the mind. [...]