Serge Teneze

Painting memory.

Our memory records particular moments attached to certain places, certain scents, the memory of people who have passed away, certain objects. These objects carry within them the trace of fleeting, intimate moments. Seeing them again, touching them, reopens the door to our (their) memory.

They contain images linked to our lives; imbued with so many moments, impressions, sensations, that they end up no longer being simple objects...they contain the memory of tragic or happy events, the indelible mark of our landmarks, of our common memory...

The object then resonates with the traces of our (its) own history, deposited on its cutaneous envelope. Time then passes and envelops, impregnates these "objects" which accompany us and leaves there, as on us, imprints, traces, and indelible scars.

Painting "memory" is what remains in me of this figurative time, which fades and transforms into a simple impression, until it becomes abstraction. What memory leaves us of these moments, of these objects, but which inevitably fade, then fade away... and disappear... the furrows of the "black lights" series, the striations of these hollowed-out grids splashed with light, or the lines of deep or colored partitions, and these hollowed "steps", carry their traces in the furrows of my memory. My memories slide into these striations, at the mercy of this light of the past; appear, disappear, then fade away, closing access to my history.

This light sculpting the ivory of my blacks strangely resonates with the last words that Victor Hugo is said to have spoken: "This is the battle of day or night... I see black light." Serge Tenèze.