Persistance des fastes, 2026

GABAN  

Plastic description

On the deep black of the canvas, left visible on the edge and in the intervals, a dense bloom occupies almost the entire surface. In the center and in the upper part, a violet concentration of remarkable intensity forms the focal point of the work: saturated violets, milky mauves, pale lilacs, agglomerated in thick masses and radiating projections. Around and below, chalky whites, dull greens and acidic greens, solar yellows, matte golds, and orange punctuations are distributed in clumps and drops. The material is placed in relief, by successive deposits, sometimes in round and full drops, sometimes in runs. The bottom of the composition darkens and leaves more room for the black of the support. Critical analysis The work is entirely built on black, which is not a background but an agent. By saturating each pigment placed on it by contrast, it gives the violets their depth, the yellows their brilliance, the whites their chalky density. The composition organizes an irradiation: the violet focal point occupies the upper and central area, and the energy diffuses downwards by fragmenting into increasingly isolated touches. This gradient of density, more than the color itself, produces the impression of persistence announced by the title. The relief also plays a role: the thick deposits catch the real light and vary the work according to the lighting, so that the brilliance is never entirely stable.

In perspective in GABAN's work

Persistence of extravagances is one of the most recent pieces in the Convergence period and marks an culmination of the Excess & Splendors series. It takes up its vocabulary—saturation, exuberance, accumulated matter—but shifts the stake: it is no longer about celebrating the apex, it is about what remains. The black background, which GABAN reserves for his most frontal compositions, is pushed to its full effect. The work dialogues directly with the twilight canvases of the same series, which share the questioning of residue, but it is distinguished by the breadth of the chromatic range and by the place accorded to violet, which is infrequent elsewhere in his work. Echo in contemporary art The work on a black background, where darkness functions as a matrix and not as a background, is part of the nocturnal abstractions developed since the second half of the twentieth century. The saturated composition, devoid of marked spatial hierarchy, falls under the principles of all-over. The accumulation of relief deposits, obtained by pouring and projection, belongs to the repertoire of paintings where the process leaves its trace on the surface. Finally, the floral motif treated without any description joins a contemporary trend to take up the vocabulary of vanities—brilliance, profusion, and the time working underneath—without retaining its iconography. GABAN introduces his own tone: the celebration has passed, and it is its trace that is painted. Symbolic and spiritual resonances The extravagances denote the deployment, the ceremony, the unrestrained spending. The title associates them with persistence, that is, with what follows them. The work works this gap: it does not represent the celebration but what it leaves, and shows that splendor can settle without extinguishing. Violet, the color of passage and the times of waiting in many traditions, occupies the central position here, and it is from it that the energy diffuses. In an inner reading, the canvas proposes that what has been experienced with intensity continues to act long after, not as a memory but as deposited matter. The black that bears all this is not an end: it is what preserves.

Conclusion

Persistence of extravagances brings together the most ambitious means of the Excess & Splendors series: a black background used as an active principle, a very extended chromatic range, a relief that varies the work according to the light. Its unity lies in the violet focal point, whose irradiation organizes the entire surface. The work makes residue a full subject, and brilliance a question of duration.