Silva Usta Manal Al-Sharif, 2020

Silva Usta, Armenian artist born in Istanbul, studied the art of jewelry in Strasbourg, then followed courses at the municipal school of plastic arts in Nice (Villa Thiole). She tackles the most varied fields, and presents in her workshop in Nice, La Conciergerie Gounod, the works of her artist friends and her own works. Her attraction for noble materials, gems and adornment, undoubtedly awakened by ancient silversmithing and the miniatures of Armenian manuscripts, famous for their shimmering colors on a gold background, is expressed in her mosaics, decorations of objects whose design she designed, interior panels or wall creations playing with nature, which will be the precious backdrop for the gestures of those who will inhabit them.

Plexiglas, polymers, ebony, tinted Murano glass, floral embroidery, tulle, feathers,

silver - Silva likewise associates the most varied materials in her jewelery-sculptures, waiting and suggesting the body that they will adorn with their baroque brilliance and their “unexpected charm” so Baudelairean.

Because the body is the constant theme of her inspiration, drawn by the flat areas of her slate and plexiglass cutouts (again, a meeting of a synthetic material and a traditional material), or engraved in the metal plate, matrix of her beautiful erotic etchings, which Martin Miguel and Alain Freixe have accompanied with their poems - etchings that celebrate carnal joys, alongside other series of engravings in which Silva explores urban and surrealizing atmospheres. Her art now flourishes in larger formats, where the body is no longer represented, but present through the artist's sole gesture, inscribed in a generous substance mixing acrylic, oil and pigments on painted backgrounds. aerosol, smooth and nebulous, from which the color seems to be born and spring. Silva develops a wide abstract writing, whose waves and swirls seem to be absorbed in themselves and abolished in a kind of colored ecstasy, to come to life and unfold again. The flexible rhythm of the concentric curves dominates, which come to architect of the more geometric keys. Sometimes a simple felt-tip trace adds the graceful outline of a breast or face. In a free canvas like "Pulsation", the dappled, black and mauve background which occupies the bottom of the work is crossed by a vertical beam starting from cold tones to explode in a spray of luminous blue and vermilion edged with a few yellow streaks , and make way for a hazy red sky. The tangle of lines creates a lyrical universe of unexpected, enigmatic and seductive shapes, in perpetual metamorphosis. Silva Usta's recent paintings thus achieve a harmonious and exhilarating synthesis of her various practices. She also often names her paintings with the name of the semi-precious stones that she uses for her jewelry - ruby, opal, jade, carnelian, turquoise, spinel with red rectangular crystals - and whose colors are found, as if in fusion, in her artist palette. The luminosity of the colors and the spontaneity of the gesture participate in the powerful formal seduction of her work where, unlike the ambient puritanism, she gives free rein to the principle of pleasure.

Jacques Simonelli