This series of acrylic paintings on paper mounted on canvas takes up, in 2025, my patterns of cities seen from above created for my work in ink on packaging cardboard (series “Interfaces” and “Cityscapes“).
“Listen to the City Falling” — Olivier Catté
The title itself is a program: it’s not about seeing the city, but about hearing it—and hearing it fall. This paradox between the visual and the auditory, between falling and contemplation, runs through the entire series.
The Zenithal Viewpoint as Vertigo. By looking at the city from above, Catté doesn’t dominate—he suspends. These rooftops, these blocks, these streets inclined at 45° seem to slide out of the frame, as if gravity had given way. The city is no longer quite holding itself together. It is about to fall, or perhaps already in the process of doing so.
Color as a State of the World From one canvas to the next, the palette tells a dramatic story: the absolute black of urban nights (the electric blue of cities under surveillance, the violet of the feverish, nocturnal city), all the way to the icy white and sandy beige that evoke the deserted or fossilized city. It is not a linear progression—it is an oscillation, like irregular breathing.
Matter as Noise The painterly gesture is charged, thick, often violent. The splashes, the drips, the bursts of white are all noises transcribed into paint. You can almost hear the acrylic slap against the canvas. Catté’s city rumbles, cracks, drips.
A City Without Inhabitants What is striking in the entire series is the absence of human figures. These are pure architectures, mineral forms—inhabited by light but emptied of their living beings. This is perhaps the deepest meaning of the title: the city falls because it has lost what held it together— People, movement, the sounds of everyday life.
The series oscillates between fascination and elegy: it is a beauty that is collapsing, and Catté asks us to listen closely. (Charles Freck 2025)