Nimbus – Troubled memory

Step by step, over time, the vision of past events becomes blurred and falls into parts. Greek statues embody a common and protected memory of a distant past that we think we know. However, very few originals survive from the so-called classical and archaic Greek period (6th and 5th centuries BC), even fewer are formally attributed to the artistic reference figures of the time (Phidias, Myron, Polycleitos). The vast majority of statues exhibited today in our museums are in fact copies of copies, anachronistic, discolored, fragmented, and presented out of their initial context/object, political or religious. The interpretation we have of it is distorted. And yet, they touch us.

I approached this series as a questioning of what is true and what is false. A black and white plate found in the reference work of Jean Charbonneaux, former Head of the Greco-Roman antiquities Department at the Louvre, is cut out, digitally recomposed, then screened to be screen printed. Each image is then worked manually in the workshop, playing on the successive inking effects (overlays, gaps, plasticity of the ink).

Memory is revealed and erased on the paper as the ink passes through the intertwining threads of the screen. As the layers go by, the blur takes shape, the vision becomes blurred.

Chroma & chronos – humans and gods

Color (chroma) and time (chronos). The polychromy of the ancient world is left aside in our learning of art history. It is an established fact, however little known, that ancient sculptures were painted, right down to the retina of the eyes. Marbles and bronzes have lost the pigments that covered their surfaces over the centuries. The statues that have come down to us are smooth and embody a certain Idea of ​​Beauty, rhythm and form. This subsequently had consequences on the very definition of painting and sculpture. The so-called “paragon” dispute during the Renaissance thus pits sculpture and painting in opposition on the basis of their apparently intrinsic qualities: purity of form in sculpture, harmony of color and representation of life in painting. The debate continued for years, gaining momentum in the 18th and 19th centuries, persisting to the present day. This set of pastels asks the question of the heritage of these classics, through a colorful facelift, aka: “kisch is back”.

Chroma & chronos – des hommes et des dieux

Dans la continuité des compositions précédentes, cette série de pastels de mains de statues grecques est un travail préparatoire de recherche autour de la couleur, des rythmes, de la forme. J’ai choisi la main pour ce qu’elle raconte du caractère et du lien à l’autre. En tant que peintre, il s’agit de mon premier outil de travail.

Chacune de ces images est faite suivant le même protocole : une main d’une statue est isolée dans un espace carré de 20 cm de côté, sur un papier Fabriano à grain fin. Le traitement de la composition, son cadrage, le rendu des modelés, couleurs et mouvements varie ensuite d’une pièce à l’autre. L’objet devient déclinaison, et motif.