L’entreprise de solitude

The Terrible Enterprise of Solitude

The idea for the TES came to me after a conversation with a friend. We were trying to translate the word «big» to spanish and he suggested «tremendo». Of course it is correct, but it is a bit more than just «big». «Tremendo» also evokes «thunder», it is the sound and fear, the grandness that scares, that makes us small in front of nature. So came to me this idea in the form of a slogan : La Tremenda Empresa de Soledad. Through this title, in the nonsense of a enterprise of solitude, I am referring to the whole society. This title came to me as a way of naming the anonymous «brainworm» that was haunting me, an idea that was missing the truth of the name, poetry and verb.

In this idea there is the solitude of creation, of the creator, alone in his studio, trying to invent stories, images and meaning by attaching pieces of meaning together. Then there is the other solitude, that of individualism. The one of man inventing his own world. The one that Lipovetsky calls the «process of personnalisation» : a quest to be the center of the universe. A quest that starts with Renaissance princes and their desire for an emancipation brought about by knowledge that will ultimately transform human beings in their darkest corners. For their purposes, these men will develop arts, science, philosophy, and will open the doors of knowledge to humanity. This rationality that will overcome the western world, the growing need for individual liberty that commerce brings about, the industrialisation that will change the world forever, this is the heritage of these pioneers who, in the 16th century, dreamed of a world where man was alone at the center of the universe. Today, in a era of communication and information, humanism never looked so much like individualism. It is this contradictory individualism, heir to modernity and humanism, that I try to define in these paintings, but also the contradictory role of painting in its multiple incarnations throughout its history.