M_7 Painting

What is striking in Gérard Escougnou’s work, is the energy of the forms and contrasts given him by the alchemy of materials. He manipulates ink in a chemical matter, biting into them or reinforcing them with a tarlike effect, full of vibrations. The recent addition of white, like a zone of silence, invites a listening for the chaotic music of the stirred colors. We are seized by the symphony of the curves. The perilous exercise of man’s interior landscape, nourished by very personal creative impulses, gives rise to a legitimate and intimate reflection on strength and fragility. The emotion is palpable. After years of doubts and interrogations, he threw himself, full bodied, into the gesture of painting, actually becoming a painter. The result for him was a feeling of liberty and plentitude. Gilles Deleuze taught him to paint and described it in 3 stages: a pre-pictorial period , nourished by experience and felt by the painter. Chaos germinates to struggle against cliché; it germinates and the painting must experience this, so that the light be born, so that color be born. We thus arrive at the” pictorial fact”. Painting is a language which should only speak of painting. What we can conclude in discovering the very accomplished work of Gérard Escougnou is that rigor and strong-mindedness do not exclude their own form of poetry.