Immediately after his retrospective at the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière in Paris, and his surprising «resurrection» following his
Meningeal hemorrhage, the artist will undertake a new series entitled "Elevations".

Taking up the matrix of Genesis, he will integrate on the canvases half-visible characters, rising towards an afterlife.

GRATALOUP will work on this theme until 2004, also integrating these same characters on the series of Leaves that he will later produce.

Between heaven and earth, there are beings connected by a visible or invisible rope.

This series is the artist’s view of this experience of imminent death, called by the Anglo-Saxons «Near Death Experience».

"In the maelstrom of life we know nothing or so little … If there is a correlation between elevation and disappearance, it is because elevation calls for disappearance and vice versa. What happens next? Is it the great clarity or the abyss? The question remains unanswered. Coming from above, sometimes a rope hangs. Should we grasp it?".