La chute (The Fall)
My paintings are above all images. They question the relation between representational parts and surfaces of abstract paint. This play is first dictated by basic compositional considerations of colour, balance, textures and rythm. But the paintings are all related to a conceptual process that the material responds to. Representation and narratives allow me to play with these ideas. These reflections, these concepts come from a dialog between philosophy and the material painting process. And the painting, if it says anything, narrates this encounter.
In this play, theory plays an important role. It is through discourse, through language that I find the words to name what I do. But what I basically do is I experiment the multiple possibilities put in place to mark the surface, to represent depth and characters. It is painting. This research, this questionning of surface and depth, has recently evolved into an ontological, personal reflection. Throughout this dialog between surface and depth, it is abstract concepts that preoccupy me more and more. These concepts, these ideas that I extract from philosophical texts, are not made intelligible in the paintings, they are conceptualized into mise-en-scènes. The simple narratives described in the paintings somehow emphasize what is already happening in the different modes of representation. These narratives evoke isolation, interiority, confrontation, loss of reality, life in community.
The title of the public presentation of my work is inspired by the eponymous 1956 book The Fall by Albert Camus. The fall names a moment in my practice. A moment that follows the theoretical graduate studies research. A moment I discovered through these studies. It is a forced passage, a moment of lucidity in the process. A moment that is repeated over and over, that keeps coming back as a surprise, each time I think I have a certain control over my means of production, over the language that I use. It is a fall into conscience and doubt. It is an essential fall that I don’t try to escape. I assume its responsibility and limits.