Preparation Painting

Painter and filmaker Works and lives in Paris Imitation is one of painting’s fundamental prerogatives. With nothing more than color, we are able to create entire worlds. It is hard to imagine more modest tools with which to give substance to our visions and presence to our thoughts. This power can even seem magical. Yet nothing is self-evident when we attempt to give form to what we wish to represent. Imitation is not the exact reproduction of things, but the translation of how they appear to us. Painting teaches us, in this sense, that economy is not only possible but desirable: it is unnecessary to depict everything in order to make a presence felt. Imitation is therefore not a mere artifice, but a kind of supernatural power of invocation—taken seriously both by religions and, in our own way, by painters. For good reason: presence belongs to what we call Spirit. For painters, this is nearly an alchemical knowledge—the ability to transform pigments mixed with glue into perceptions and sensations, into what we call images. The task seems almost impossible, perhaps even destined to fail. And yet it is this very quest that we pursue, with an enthusiasm that those around us may understandably find suspicious. Since 2007, my research in drawing and painting focuses on the issue of family ties that I hear as a metaphor for relations and power in today's society. To this end, I wholeheartedly support on mythological or biblical stories. Telescoped in today's world, they allow me to express what is a central concern in my work: the lack of significant difference between the mythological time and history, between documentary and fiction. Meanwhile, a question keeps coming up: why is it often that guilt is the consequence of punishment. This is this amazing reversal (punishment and then, crime) which I try to speak of.