Pigmented  Journeys 

                                                         Translation : M. HOLT

   My artistic approach is part of an iconographic tradition which consists in collecting materials in a first stage, then in an assembly in a second, following the example of the new realists, who import real life into the art, also a reference to the journey diaries of Delacroix, who for one of the first times in art history, integrates memories of his stays in the East, mixes texts in the images, and watercolors in herbariums. Picasso, the first one, through his still life in the cane chair, in 1912, will question the structure of the surfaces of paintings by introducing materials and techniques which are usually foreign to the artistic painting.

   In my plastic research, the mixture of mediums articulates between two and three dimensions, the painting marrying the photography and the sculpture becoming painting. Let us quote the pictorialistes of the beginning of the century, Arnulf Rainer or still Pierre and Gilles who paint on the photo, these actors develop a glance at the photo, but especially the use of its support. Bas-reliefs present various collected materials, then assembled, during various journeys made on five continents, and it in around thirty countries. Materials, natural or artificial, souvenir or photos-memories, are presented or represented, confronted, merged with each other allowing the establishment of visual, material correspondences, and plastic.

 
   Materials collected in every corner of the world are then assembled into a bas-relief which proposes to the onlooker to pursue his own route. A route which will be tactile, olfactive, visual, gustative, or hearing according to each person. Correspondence between the senses is possible, so the art becomes a means of synthetic perception.
The various papers, such as newspapers, of silk, tickets, or photo, constitute the base of the work in 2D which with, the union of objects, transforms certain spaces into 3D. The painting, which by its features is a drawing, is transformed into sculpture, more exactly into bas-relief with the aim of drawing up routes to be followed by the spectator. As Marcel Duchamp underlines; " it is the onlooker who does the work ". I invite him thus not only to do the work, but to live it and to experiment with it.

   Materials such of the opals of New Zealand, precious stones of Brazil, gold leaf of Thailand, stamps, various currencies, various fragments of newspapers, photographic clichés, sketches of journey diaries, are combined allowing those who contemplate it to make a road, through the bas-relief, to be a witness of an assembly of fragments and memories of these numerous journeys. In certain works, consisting of food, candy stores or cake stores , the spectator will be invited to eat the continuity of his route, for example with a candy serpentine which will finish its race in the stomach of the spectator. So an interrogation is made into the notion of consumption of art. The view which takes in forms is it not dominated by the gustative sense of a spectator which eats the outlines of the work The culinary journey thus proposes a dematerialization of the same mental journey.

   These assembled parts establish a testimony of time, of various graphic, visual and plastic influences following the example of a market of Kyoto or Buenos Aires, where we find everything : images, spices, flavors(perfumes), color, materials, materials(subjects), vagueness, speed, flows, traffic, life.
Of the photography, which represents a scene or an object, a presented souvenir itself and for itself, mediums conjugate in kind,, in number, and in plastic properties which bring the spectator to appreciate the work according to his/her own sensibility.

   Having worked several years with children and adults in situation of handicap, my works want to be accessible to all, proposing to a spectator-traveler deprived of sight to make his journey through the painting by other means of reading, such as touch, which becomes a means of transport favoring circulation in the work.
The touch can enable us to follow a route drawn by relief painting, to meet obstacles as stones, the earth of South America which come to interrupt the journey, obliging the traveler to change his road, his reading. … The onlooker is thus not congealed, he is an individual allowed to get lost within the surface of the painting on meeting various cultural, natural aspects, or questioning himself in front of a topical subject.

 
   Freeing the painting of its support, and breaking the limits of the canvas: invading the sides with objects almost demanding their autonomy.
If the line symbolizes a route to be made, the spectator can sometimes meet dotted lines, symbols of the discontinuity of the line, so evoking a space of freedom in which the traveler-actor can get lost. He is not a simple spectator anymore but an actor of his sensory route.

   This is variable, he can follow his chromatic sensibility, look for plastic, aesthetic, similar properties between two materials. We can also envisage the correspondence of the vertical and horizontal lines, which when they join form a checkerboard, a governed mental space?? Not by a mathematical rigor (drawing), but by a poetic rigor (pictorial and chromatic) which allows us to escape from too strict constraints of a heavily connotated checkerboard. This reminds us of the requirement of Mondrian: only horizontal and vertical loaded with strong symbolism, becoming identified with the man for verticality, the Woman for the horizontality, or still the God and the human being.

 
   The checkerboard, the means of measure of space in the Renaissance, is envisaged in my plastic research as a means to run away into fate, in a motionless, dictated and directed route. So even if it is presented in my research, this tends to deform, releasing the lines of too strict constraints allowing the spectator-traveler to be an actor. The serpentine line haunts and roams the painting canvas, as the serpentines or the confettis of a carnival, in the mannerist period it built the space of the picture following the example of The Virgin in the long neck of the Parmesan cheese, by 1535. It also evokes the trajectory of a hiking trail, a road, a road. When they join, lines to form a checkerboard, which becomes a space of mental journey, allowing the spectator to be an actor and to follow his own route.

   As a pawn of checkers or chess, the spectator can become a castle, a king, a bishop or another pawn to make this dreamlike journey. It is a point placed on the checkerboard, a free electron which tries to escape from too strict lines which imprisons him. The internal focus will allow him/her to take the place of the pawn, and to make its road, without being manipulated by a player.

   Through different routes in the countries of the forms, the colors, the volumes, the reliefs, and the other plastic properties, the spectator is invited to become an actor of his pigmented journey. The interactive character of the work aims at the traveler of better know himself as a journey enriches the one who makes. The use of mirrors enables him(her) thanks to the reflection of his image and the universe in which he is in, to make an introspection of himself .

   In the course of the journeys, of the Buenos Aires, in Tokyo, by way of New York, Riga, Sydney, Bangkok, Kaikoura, Montreal to Tunis or Iguazu, the journey feeds by plastic meetings, and participle in the creation of trajectories. The spectator-actor of his route, or the sensory traveler observes, feels, experiments with materials and by his sensory journeys, there is in itself a route which is personal to him, through this pigmented journey.