CORPSACCORDS
Dreams are fugacious
« I love the energy of drawing ». Then, Emmanuel Mergault's thin layers of painting let breathe the sketch traces, that are everywhere in the painter's work. The brush marks become light, and let us see the network lines of the preparatory drawing. From that sort of lightness emerges serenity, which wouldn't go withouth filling the audience -loving this sweet back and forth between sketch and painting- with enthusiasm. That success reminds Rodin's ever-cherished "sanguines".
« The audience makes me gradually become conscious of a whole set of symbols I wouldn't have thought of. I'm not used to having my work prepared. I let my instinct speak for itself…»
Instinctive while academical, as a reminiscence of Paris' "Ateliers des Beaux- Arts", Emmanuel's works bury a whole symbolic system of the body. Italian Renaissance's genius ghosts seem to be near...
« Bodies in motion fascinate me. I like to capture their energy. The more I work on bodies, the more new horizons open to me. »
From these horizons have never appeared -and will never appear- the face of the reproduced person : « I don't want neither my models to recognize themselves, nor the spectators who could thus identify through them. The expression of the body fulfills itself. »
The art of sketching the essential.
Man facing his demons
Claude Duvauchelle's passion was born from a scrawly drawing at kindergarten. It came with a wonderful feeling of existing, too, pictured by these brutalized and tortured bodies that illuminate this painter's works. Indeed, they painfully exist.
« My work is based on man and its violence, should it be physical, psychological, religious, economic or even sexist... I denounce man's failings causing all kinds of sufferings. »
As opposed to Ernest Pignon-Ernest's work that denounced a precise event, or even to Bacon's which was far more affected by nazism and homophobia surrounding his country, Claude Duvauchelle's method whishes for being more global. It deals with man without defining illnesses or victims.
During his long stay in Italy, the painter has learnt the edifying lessons of the elders. « Caravaggio, Mantegna (The dead Christ), Tiepolo,…all these paintings of martyres and crucifixions have affected me strongly and for quite a long time. »
Painting unlikely poses (« in order to avoid déjà-vu ») can become a game on the technical side : shortcuts, clair-obscur, linear perspectives... The originality of the works lies in their every-direction legibility. The artist keeps on turning the canvas upside-down while creating, to come up with its best angle.
The titles of the works are also a question of sense. While « Tragique balle perdue » ("Tragic stray bullet") is explicit enough to show a innocent victim lying down, head covered in blood, the more enigmatic « Vertige du monde » shows two levitating bodies, ready to collapse. The spectator interrogates both the metaphor and the work. The first one calms down, while interrogating the second one -as his letters, drawings and phrases, which input a semblance of humanity in that flood of unpersonified and alienated bodies. As a necessity of metaphors and oxymorons to heal the wounds. As a necessity of arts to heal the body's sufferings -and the soul.
Cédric CHAORY
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