Qu'est-ce qu'on attend 1, 2018
Flo Jaouen

She chose painting to say. His process of narrative figuration impregnates the intimate and the link with the other where an amused formalism is extracted which breaks the first coherence of astonishment.

Flo Jaouen makes the beings converse, turned towards their interiority or directed towards the others. These identities, his representations of self, are obvious characters of our conscious and unconscious. Real characters but also statues, dolls or figurines, they challenge us frontally on what we send back. This complexity of the individual is depicted in a world, a closed eight where landmarks of time and place are blurred. Excerpts from their contexts, the characters are free of decorations and any narration that could reveal their universe. Their situations compose a fiction that upsets the codes whose plot escapes us vertiginously.

The artist paints a reality that moves, fascinates, amazes, entertains, questions and worries at the same time. The innocence of young protagonists facing the adult world leads to a cheerful humor that refers, not without malice, to the ambivalence of childhood; a focus of love and tension.

When one takes the time to look at the paintings of Flo Jaouen, little by little the atmosphere is transformed, the look passes through a new prism. Benevolent feelings fade away in favor of hostile, gushing sensations such as the empirical effects of fatigue, weariness, the stress of grown-ups facing their shameless blond heads. The artist plays naivety to arouse trouble and reveal a world of tension between people. It conjures the predictable and disturbs the expected. "I like to make the scene alive, my characters have to express an emotion. I wish to transmit in my canvases a strength that I feel in the depths of me, the energy of life. "

His works escape this form of primary realism, purely illustrative. The figuration is built on a critical language, the questioning of a humanity. "At a certain point of realism, detail, you can not invent. The reality is much richer than the imaginary. Construction works at the same time the figure and the space. The structure of the plain background calls the position of the body and vice versa. The original framing gives the impression of volume. This spatial hierarchy includes in its space the one who looks at it.

The artist prepares his sketch on computer based on photos of his relatives or strangers. The reduced and soft palette contributes to a refined atmosphere.

"Color is secondary to me and less important than history. "

The expression of the scene appears by getting rid of all aestheticism, all unnecessary ornamentation. The concentrated real, decenter the question of the landmark in a minimalist setting where the unity of the place disappears.

The child is presented in its indoor environment, a living room, a room emptied of all furniture except a couch. This recurrent element underlines a situation that is meant to be analytic. It is an invitation to place oneself in the listening and looking disposition for a better understanding of the narrative. The transfer is organized, favoring the subjective appropriation of parts of life; illustrations of a collective memory. Everyone has lived or witnessed such a situation.

Tensions, points of imbalance, percussive details, grimaces ... The bodies, the looks speak for themselves. By persisting in giving meaning to the image, the artist takes care to specify as much as possible the signs that could feed the narrative dimension.

"I want the viewer to ask questions, decrypt a message. During my childhood, I spent my time playing. I remember this jubilation of inventing stories, creating situations. Finally, I continue to play today differently on the web. A little girl putting on her father's oversized shoes, a young boy learning to wear his shoes or reading a book that does not seem to him destined ... All these scenes show how the child gradually gains his independence from the disillusioned presence of the adult who sleeps or seems to divert his attention.

With his flat colors and this painting that gives individuals a real psychological depth, his works evoke those of Edward Hopper. As in the case of the American realist painter, the staging of relationships with others gradually accentuates the border between interior and exterior space. This metaphysical atmosphere plunges the human figure into a certain solitude. Leonardo Cremonini also finds this approach, which Flo Jaouen readily quotes as a reference for his lines, his geometric shapes and his subjects with expressive and melancholic strength.

She also alleges her admiration for Vassily Kandinsky and her narration of abstract voluble elements that have particularly influenced her in her work. The disturbing and tortured atmosphere of Francis Bacon and Gérard Garouste are other referent masters for the painter. But with his style both realistic and sharp, his work could be part of the figurative legacy of Lucian Freud and his models painted in his empty studios on beds and sofas, in unusual poses, sometimes with raw attitudes.

Attractive by his technical mastery, Flo Jaouen's painting is disturbing by its narrative tone the visible order. His human figures filled with meanings and attachments constitute a pictorial history as sensitive as it is distorted, which makes it possible to reach an essential and surprising angle.