La jarre, 2022

Rachel Daireaux  

La Jarre “Nothing prevents us from saying that, compared to this reality, the appearance of art is illusory; but one can say with as much reason that what we call reality is a stronger illusion, a more deceptive appearance than the appearance of art”. Hegel. Rachel Daireaux has well internalized the idea that art is the means by which consciousness becomes self-awareness. Self-awareness, awareness of the other, awareness of others. Awareness of its flaws, awareness of its weaknesses, awareness of the culture of its scars. There is a crowd in the jar, a crowd of faults, a crowd of vices and deadly sins. By sweeping the work of the glance, in addition to the flagrant symbol of abundance, it is a multitude of feminine attributes which appears in the eyes of the viewer of work. What could be more normal when you know the place held by women within all the myths, sinister temptresses… Eve cannot say the opposite, she and the apple any more than Pandora the curious and the deceitful. Everyone goes their own way, their way, their way and their voice to access enlightenment, helped or not by their own deity and their intimate religious convictions or not. As close as possible to the work, to the left of the painting, rowing... boats and scallops... one can only think of Noah's Ark tossed about by divine punishment and Venus (painted by Botticelli) in unstable balance on her scallop shell, too busy hiding her nudity with her long blond hair. Note a kind of moving Tower of Babel and passengers on board to escape to the world of knowledge and rebirth. In the middle of the tumult, a divine silence makes its way through a precipitate abandonment of the artist who willingly uses nude color, which is to say the importance of the body but also of white, candor of angelic beings (as opposed to the fallen angel coming out of the jar). A naked couple symbolizes the poet who sends a divine breath to awaken bruised souls. Children like so much spotless love… An Indian Buddhist deity with two veils appears as a disturbing element. Milk seems to flow from her breast. Dante are you there? But if you look closely (like reading “Charlie are you there?”) you will discover for sure, because there is, the solar eye, the Inca eye. In this chaos, this dark night of misguided systems, let us remember only the sight of these funnel/spillway pink hibiscuses, between the legs of the Fallen Angel which represent Brotherly love, the only escape from the inhumanity of men, this form of hope that remained at the bottom of the jar, remained at the bottom of Pandora's Box." Francine Ohayon