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Press Release:
GO FIGURE
August 22 - September 26, 2010
Artist Reception: Friday, September 3, 5 - 9 pm
Philadelphia - August 15, 2010: The Dalet Gallery is pleased to present the works of two contemporary French artists, Jean Becette and Thibaud Thiercelin, in a show entitled "Go Figure".
Idioms, like art, do not readily yield to definition or explanation. Above all, they are intuitive, as art itself, and oblige to be interpreted metaphorically. At the same time, not without a dollop of charming awkwardness, they can be perceived quite literally. Our new show is entitled "Go Figure". Eponymous English idiom serves as an expression of surprise, astonishment or wonder. But in the context of the show it can also be perceived literally as an ages-old fantasy of an artist-demiurge breathing life into his creations, ordering subjects of his art to go, to move, to progress, to transform, to illuminate, to reveal. Artists, both French by origin, chose their own unique ways of interpreting the theme of the exhibition.
Jean Becette's approach is rather analytical, aesthetical: he depicts the multiplicity of the meanings of the idiom by showing realistically looking figures in transition, movement, dance. "When I paint I lose my "self", and the experience of creating is transformational. It is a dance, a journey of self-discovery, a joy, an accident, a prayer, a dedication."
The figurative meaning of the phrase "Go Figure" serves as an ironic commentary to the feelings that inspired series of the paintings with more abstract subject matter. The artist started the paintings when he moved recently back to France, to a self-described "close-minded and self-centered culture", where the paintings became a necessary means to fight insecurity and to confront his growing discontent with aloof social surrounding. (In our opinion phrase "Go figure!" perfectly describes situation of a French-man not feeling at home in his motherland's milieu). "I paint my experiences of seeing a world either off balance or off kilter. I create a holding space for dualities..., trying to expose truth with beauty." The expressive, animalistic magnetism of his paintings is stylistically cold and detached, but betrays feelings of a person caught off guard, being watched without knowing it, being judged. At the same time the paintings strive to create a dialogue between the viewer and the watched through their universal beauty of line, harmony of color and musicality of the depicted action.
To see Jean Becette's work is to take an anthropological journey into the diverse cultures which contributed to his development as an artist (at different stages of his life he lived in France, Southeast Asia, Japan, USA). The refined structure and sophisticated simplicity betray the influence of Asian sensibilities. The mountains of a Sung Dynasty landscape emerge from mist; iconic images of hands, arms, or profiles evoke Japanese ghost stories. Becette's paintings possess seemingly strange combination of Western self-assertive aggressiveness and tranquil wisdom rooted in Eastern philosophies. His figures are silhouettes, they appear and vanish. They represent traces of something constantly changing. Jean doesn't create his world; he dissolves himself in the stream of existence, and unconsciously extracts, separates images, instant translucent snapshots, which are superimposed on each other, creating the sensation of time, the relationship of instant and eternity. Figures-specters interact with each other, reject the shadows, which revive and therefore express themselves, and leave their trace in the interlacement of whimsical trajectories. At the same time his figures are posing expressively, self-assuredly, even with a great deal of self-admiration. They are active, sometimes pointing (western active position) and it reflects the artists' western tendency to analyze, to localize, to find, to predict and to act proactively.
On the other hand, Thibaud Thiercelin's paintings are very immediate, emotional, a kaleidoscope of consciousness, spontaneous depiction of life, human existence in all its ugliness and beauty, unpredictability and perseverance.
He "speaks" figures, he uses symbolic figures to relay his immediate feelings about everything around him. At the same time Thibaud attempts to "figure" the world, tries to understand it through interrelation of symbols-figures, and attempts to look under a "figure's" mask. Like a child he perceives the world directly and immediately, unpretentiously depicting his surprises, delights, fears or sadness. His world retains the impulsiveness, roughness and intimacy of the chaotic world we live in. Thibaud's creative process is not unconscious. Neither is it analytical. He doesn't accept labeling, filtering and sorting, - everything that makes the world a simplified model, easy to formalize, understand and to act in. His world is real although it does not have a cohesive storyline or a defined symbolism.
We are all nomads in this world, there is no large or small, significant or insignificant: a salamander and a tree, a boat and a stonewall, all are as spiritual as humans are. The artist had no academic training and maybe due to this fact his frank, simplified almost primitive but uncommonly potent artistic language strikes a chord with our intuitive, suppressed and childish selves.
It can be argued that Thibaud intuitively came to the Eastern philosophy closer then Jean, who is constantly struggling in between his conscious desire to surrender to the Way and his natural need to act. Thibaud' world consists of eternal and ever-shifting symbols, the masked Figures, light and dark, joyful and sad, and you can make it open to you. Just remove the masks and say "It's me… I'm not a stranger."
- Irena Gobernik, Jeanne Heinz
| sep. 1, 2010
jul. 12, 2010
may. 26, 2010
apr. 20, 2010
mar. 27, 2010
mar. 5, 2010
dec. 12, 2009
dec. 2, 2009
oct. 23, 2009
sep. 23, 2009
aug. 27, 2009
may. 31, 2009
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