BIOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS.
My life, a work-in-progress ; it was messy, rebellious to any form of authority. I felt so often limited that gradually the work encouraged me to practice self-discipline. The freedom I then found allowed me to refine my sensations, the patience gave me constancy, confidence, tolerance. I concentrate on the essential, I paint daily and am completely involved. My artwork ; a work-in-progress.
With great gentleness, my mother taught me to smile at the little things, to be satisfied with the quietness and to see the beauty in everything. With a lot of patience, she shared with me her passion for art, we often went to visit museums or to see exhibitions. She showed me the nuances of colors that my eye does not see well. By showing me the importance of certain details, she opened my eyes and made me discover different forms of perspective. By presenting things to me from different points of view, she was especially interested in the expression of my own.
I remember various special moments, such as the time when I thought to myself, while caressing the sensual curves of a marble, that I would never know how to do such things. Many years later, I remember how the installation Les Guerriers, by Ousmane Sow, threw me back into the memory of a nightmare. As a child, I was in the middle of a warlike scene, where everyone was killing each other for my sake. I think I was marked by the paintings of Eugène Delacroix.
I wanted to study art, so I was directed towards science. I was particularly interested in the mechanics of forces, technical drawing and the resistance of materials. This helps me to interact with the material. A course of study related to teaching led me to become interested in the psyche. The profession of educator opened me to Zen. I was introduced to meditation in action. The practice of Niwaki Zendo (Japanese tree pruning) led me to create Japanese gardens and other landscapes in which I stage sculptural forms.
Interested by forest fires, I give symbolic life to dead trees. It has been said that this is art. That they say that challenges me and propels me in a long process of research. I want to see with myself if I am really gifted with creativity and able to bring my ideas into the material. I live this period as a dream state of ideal life. To hear myself say in the middle flows a quiet river is significant, it is time to be in the flow of life, to express one's feelings. From work-in-progress to this dream, I encourage myself to invest more and more time and energy to achieve this life. The conclusions I formulate then always resonate with great accuracy:
What is creation? Where do ideas come from?
Can we listen to matter? Does it instinctively guide the hand?
Can it inspire the mind? Can we trust "what comes" ?
The material sculpts the artist.
In my early days, I worked in arte povera. I walk through forest fires, selecting charred tree trunks. For me, they are animated of singular movements. They offer me a raw material of the first order. My eye searches for what to create marriages of forms, which allow me to make the trees dance. Different versions of the Germ of the idea are born from this work. Some sculptures will be made in bronze. The bent wood allows me to create large installations bending in high winds. However, the call of painting is felt, I know that I must learn to paint, that it will take me time, that it is what will allow me to better express the spontaneous movement that I want to reveal.
My approach in the garden has such a similarity with my installations, that La Maison des Artistes validates the originality of my approach. It allows me to sign several gardens, large-scale vivid works. I use the perspectives of the place to catch a glimpse of the movements of the different lines of force to reveal to the users. At night, rock lamps highlight the curves of the landscape. During the day, they disappear; in the darkness, these pebbles float above a ray of light.
During a visit to the Tate Modern Gallery, my overactive imagination conjures up a possible variant of gestural painting. Throwing paint perfectly vertically should allow me to suggest the universe of all possibilities. It is the depth of Jackson Pollock's paintings that gives me the desire to verticalize dripping. This juxtaposition of dots and the nuances of color create glimmers and sparkles. This gives us the depth of the celestial myriads of phosphenes. As a child I used these visions to fall asleep and dive into my imagination. As an adult, I realize that everything comes to us permanently, ideas, information, futures that we create by adapting to the present.
This shifted version of dripping inspires me to create several painting installations. The use of phosphorescent pigments reveals, in the darkness, that what comes is infinite. This is how I notice that people do not see the same things. To perceive that eye movements produce shifted visions inspired me to find artifacts that could provoke changes in viewpoints.
One day, in order to paint something else, I provoke the paint... I slip and fall into the canvas.
A shard from a glass jar filled with blue oil paint diluted with turpentine cuts my hand deeply. During these two long years of convalescence, I realize that the impulse is at the origin of all movement. I have to imagine different tools to overcome the handicap of this hand which will remain forever partially insensitive and rigid.
Extending my arm with a bamboo stick makes me paint with my arm. I free my gesture, it gains in amplitude. The persistent pain and stiffness of this hand stiffens the muscles of my arm. I keep on making movements to unroll it and relieve it. These movements are to paint.
In order to paint as I draw and to show that the figures arise, I first use felt-tip tracings, then others with charcoal. Then I cover the paintings I have done before, I cut the fresh oils with a knife, the background appears, it becomes the form. After three canvases made in this way, I imagine eyes in drops of paint and I finally dare to paint live. The faces and expressions tell themselves, I revisit scenes linked to current events.
The automatic painting makes me discover that since my childhood I use this form of drawing. Relying on what comes, I don't know yet that I use a version of the technical imagination advocated by Francis Bacon. Painting performances are gradually making me paint a bit like I draw.
In worlds with agitated atmospheres, a multitude of metaphorical forms intermingle. I let myself be carried away in stories that I tell myself, they reveal themselves while painting. The titles come to me when I reread the paintings. Today they sometimes impose themselves during the exercise. I always ask myself if I should paint the background before the form, or if I should do the opposite. I make waves of paint, by making one pass over the other I affirm and refine my line.
Instead of scrolling and cultivating the network, I thwart the workings of the publishing modalities on Instagram. I realize a polyptych of 14 linear meters. It corresponds to 130 publications. They are all related to the following. I then realize in the wake of painting installations that can change appearance and be modified according to the exhibition spaces. I quickly gave up the use of social networks, I noticed that they diverted us from the path and required too much time, availability and involvement.
As I focus on the origin of the creative movement, I realize that I paint parables of what I discover. It happens on the canvas and I am often surprised at what comes. I like to take risks. The accident allows me to find solutions in the moment. It animates me, shakes me up, subjugates me.
At school, the child that I was escapes by occupying the margins of my notebooks with scribbles, I always discover new characters. They talk to me, tell me what I am going through, it amuses me. My will is to be able to paint like this. The facts of current events inspire me for a long time. #MeeToo, the attacks, the covid give me a lot of things to depict in my way.
From the beginning of the first confinement, I tell myself that humanity is experiencing something artistically unprecedented. Wondering what similarities to reveal, I imagine that we will all enter into introspection.
To paint this form of reflection, I attach large mirrors around two easels, allowing me to paint the characters alternately, as if they were observing themselves in a mirror. The following paintings speak of dreams related to the reduction of our freedoms.
The death of loved ones makes me reconsider the essence of my approach. Instead of painting the facts of the day, I choose to live my mourning. My characters fly away. Like crosses, they twirl like these ideas which do not cease to come to the conscience.
As a child, my mother made me discover the work of Henri Matisse. I realize how much it inspires this period where, a form of abstraction propels me between sky and earth.
Just as I like to sit in the middle of a river to watch the water come and go, I like to perceive impermanence.
In the Sahara, the wind sets everything in motion, I discover a desert of thoughts.
When I leave the confinements, I wish to open myself to the world, I leave for the Sahara. While walking, I observe the structure of the dunes. The camel ride is done at the rhythm of the dromedaries, their heavy steps destructure the dunes, the wind restructures them. With the Bedouins everything is simple, efficient, without fuss. I actively participate and watch everything from this other world. I often move away, it is good to wander alone in the immensity of this environment where I mix my trace with those of the living.
The wave repeats itself endlessly, the dunes are of all sizes. The play of the shadow and the light reminds me that of the waves. I will return to drink from the desert crossings, I dream of living the storm and the sandstorm. In this timeless space, the movement of the wind tirelessly redraws the landscape.
It inspires me, I discover a desert of thoughts.
On my return, I feel even more on the fringe, even more out of place. In the Alps, the desert wind winks at me, it colors the sky, on the line the snowdrifts, it is unreal. In these dune-like snows, the skis cut the pink, trace white curved waves, it is luminous, sculptural.
My original line always captivates me, it moves to the foreground, my characters leave the frame. I listen to the sound of the brush, it squeaks and sings the union of the paint with the canvas. I refine my line, it suggests the finesse of a pencil line. It draws simple forms, links them together, they are formed and transformed. They are only subjective, however each one believes to see various things, he only imagines them. He perceives the forms as they occur to me.
Today, I only validate a work if I feel surprised, challenged. I like it only if it disturbs me and if it makes me want to do others. I sign my paintings and sculptures with the monogram XOTT and the year of creation. On the back of each painting, a more detailed description describes the title, the context, my name, the year and a distinctive line. This personalizes the certificate of authenticity. I date with precision the day of the sketch and of the end so that it is easier for me to follow, to trace the progression.
INSPIRATIONS.
The work of artists builds me, shows me gestures, attitudes, forms of thoughts. It introduces me to different techniques related to thought forms.
As a child, I love reading comics and observing the freedom of expression suggested by Osvaldo Cavandoli's La Linéa. His character lives the present moment to the full, adapting to it while grumbling, constantly transforming and adjusting. On the other hand, the universe of the Shadoks by Jacques Rouxel and J.P. Couturier show the lack of adaptation to a globalized system whose recent news confirm its vision. The striking graphics of Mandryka's Masked Cucumber inspire me to create several characters. The impossible and infinite constructions of M.CC Escher lead me to play at seeing each moment differently. I make parables of the present.
Certain raw materials of the arté Povera, of which the soul of the trees of Guiseppe Penone, the art in situ and ephemeral of A. Goldsworthy, the detour of the reality of Joan de Foncuberta, incite me to dialogue with the perspectives of the landscapes. The Black Light of Pierre Soulages, the Rays of Light of Mark Rothko, lead me to the All Over, then to the depths of the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock. The reflections on the Technical Imagination of Francis Bacon, the shifted visions of the Vanities of Salvador Dali, the techniques of drawing and automatic painting of André Masson, the animated perspectives of Roberto Matta, the bestiary of Wilfredo Lam, the painting and the Manifesto of André Breton, the audacious evolution of the line of Pablo Picasso, the preform of abstraction led by Paul Cézanne, the freedom of expression of Miro, and the animated characters of Keith Harring, open my eyes on the inequality of the freedoms that Jean Michel Basquiat denounces. The anonymity of Andy Warholl's subjects, Marlene Dumas' portrait walls and Hugo Pratt's characters, Bansky's Little Girl with a Balloon, Mark Rothko's and Marc Chagall's use of egg tempera, Henri Matisse's Birds and Dancers, David Hockney's waves, Cy Twombly's gestural painting of Bacchus, and Brice Marden's restrained movements all make me think. They inspire me and make me cultivate a form of unbound movement. By changing perspectives, all of them "allow" me to revisit for a while the original lines. I dare to change the parameters, I appropriate new gestures, I work on the technique, I dare the audacity of gestures to say and express my own visions. I travel again and continue to study the work of my peers.
