wiped face #3 Print

As a twin, I have a particular interest for individualities. This has greatly heightened my gaze. Differentiating between identical twins demands a higher degree of concentration as usual. I thus had to develop an acute eye and memory for faces. Each individual has its own expressiveness, shaping their uniqueness. Portraits therefore came to me quite naturally. Figuration acts out and thinks the body as worthy of being represented – in all its ugliness, its beauty, its diversity. The body becomes an object of artistic assertion. The portraits are frontal. The spectator cannot escape from it. They are absorbed by the gaze. They are judging them, gauging them, drawing conclusions, then adjust themselves, react and adopt a role in function of the person in front of them (the spectator’s ability to adapt). The spectator is placed in a situation of direct confrontation with the depicted subjects. Nearly spreading across the whole painting, the faces are stoutly present and … not ephemeral. The idea is to create certain specific emotional atmospheres. And this breeds a conversation. A conversation started by the painting, perhaps not of the most optimistic kind. The spectator, if they bother to truly face the portrait, sees in it a lived experience that breaks the boundaries of the surface. A subtlety perceived in depth in these expressive faces. A tension is born.