I'd like to meet:
ROBERT MALAVAL & PAUL GAUGUIN.
but not too soon.
BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY
For this series, my idea was to magnify the texts of certain blues to spotlight them as works of art. And I feel that one doesn't say enough about it. Tapping your foot, swaying your head, savoring the bass. it's so cool to fly with the guitars and the harmonicas, those marvelous pianos and all that flashing brass, they're great. It's all so beautiful.
But, what do they say literally, these whiskey stained voices of velvet. Vertigo. This is the second part: the words. These words, me too, I want to roll these diamonds in my fingers, write them on my canvases, distill them. This "second part", this is the part that will remain obscure and which, once deciphered, provide the ultimate thrill.
Simplicity. Nudity. 3 accords, like the 3 primary colors , aligned with these sober texts. Astonishing. Luminous. The correspondence is there. With this you say all and it's that, that I search, since always, in my work as painter.
The words remain... I wanted for them to be seen. That's the reason for this vital gesture, of literally writing them, painting them, scratching them, or even carving them on "Not fade away".
I work by instinct. I immerse myself with the feeling of the piece that I want and I go for it, I no longer worry about the masses of color, or the general composition of the painting, in finding a place for the words, in making a bed for the words if you will. At this time it's only the color, this festival of color that transports me. But the words scoff at me, call out to me. I seize them, explode them, pare them, push them around. The lose their symbolic and literal sense and become hieroglyphics, elements free of the composition. Then I make them shine with black, and sometimes I add a "blue note" to let the ensemble ring out...
Then I sense the emergence of another rhythm... jazz in spite of myself?
Jazz, it comes from a phrase of the blues. The jazz musician does what I attempt to do with words and colors. He stretches out, transforms, encourages other rhythms. He takes every liberty. He improvises. This is where we come together. Instinct and spontaneity. Pleasure and liberty. That's where it is!
For the show in Gallery Keller, Paris, I decided to mix thoses pieces with Iggy Pop texts, and then, with another sery called "Tuons les tous" (Let's kill them all). Just for love.
------------------------------PASSENGERS, DEAD FISHES, BAD WEATHER & SICK PAINTINGSTime Kills
First of all the painting will be square. In the center will be another square; white, immaculate, like a soul. A space that is pure, dazzling, symbolizing the instant when it all starts. This square, this inalterable space, this witness, will be alive and surrounded by living matter upon which I shall record the signs of time passing, the years that accumulate.
Around my immaculate square, I spread boiling asphalt on the canvas. I cover that entirely with a first coat of white and for a few days I observe the force of the asphalt overtaking the white, yellowing, becoming grayish, uncertain, but warm. I add one, then two layers of white to slow down the process. After a few weeks I see the metastasis and I'm aware of my impotence to stop this diabolical phenomenon. I 'm amazed and perplexed before this implacable alchemy. My painting is alive, changing, eroded by the process of the destructive asphalt. The painting is falling apart and I have vertigo.
I decide to arrest the process with a few final coats of a superior quality acrylic; like one covers an enfant in a precious shroud, insignificent but white.
Then I take my most beautiful black and paint a sign as old as mankind: The traces for counting the moons, the traces for counting the days, the traces for counting the time; that will be the only figurative aspect.
And then, and this is important, I'll put it all in a framework of pure blue, ultramarine. A blue that's cosmic, intense and profound, a blue absolute. The color of eternity. There it is.What blows me away is the relentlessness of the phenomenon. The emulsion of oil and water is unable to resist the virulence of the pitch. The latter is so thoroughly corrosive that it attacks the oil, of course, but also the acrylic. The white as well as the color. Persistent, tranquil and fatal. There is nothing left to do. It's lost.
The built-up layers of paint are as the layers of the goods that we accumulate to protect our bodies and our chilled spirits. Our anti-aging makeup and schemes of resistance, the pathetic barriers that we raise for protection against sickness and death.The toxic vapors of bitumen in fusion reminds me of the odors of my city and it's pavements. The universe of asphalt that fills the air with carbon monoxide. Like the poisons of the city that are after my skin, the bitumen will have it's way with my painting.
"Time kills", is the quintessence of sick paintings because it is the essence of what I wanted to show in this series. It's a perfect form, a little space of pure truth, intact; witness to the body/painting that will live, age and die; all contained in a setting of eternal,
cosmic, blue.
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