American Trauma I Painting

I grew up and spent most of my life in France. Since moving to the U.S, I found myself loving to wander around flea markets. In fact, this is how I began to buy vintage cabinet photos and old illustration books. I’m very sensitive to the expression, the shape of the face, the body position and if the photo is damaged by time. If the photo establishes a connection with me, I take it. Often, my collages are the vehicle of eye experiments in body modification. Making traditional handmade collages is weirdly to me closed to our modern science, closed a laboratory genetic manipulation. I scalp and paste together anatomic pieces to create exquisite corpses. The scalpel cut pieces cover the image and thus reveal a new meaning at the manner of a palimpsest. Covering, hiding, assembling the pieces create new combinations. The collage breaks our vision of a known body. The making of these grotesque hybrids open new possibilities. When collage usually reduces the image to a layered pasted image, here the collage seems to aim to create a new world concealing art, anatomy and poetry.