La montagne au-dessus d'eux, 2022

Louis-Paul Ordonneau  

Signed on the back by the artist.

"Painting is descending into oneself"

“When you come to an exhibition, you expect to discover novelties and to see where the progress of the artist is.

This time for my exhibition at the Galerie Claire Corcia, there is no contemporary novelty, no assertive one-upmanship, no confirmation of belief, no certainty or coherence, no theory.
Because the surface of the lake is full of dead leaves, there is a deep water plunge.
Today I present a work of deconstruction that I carried out to return to the essence of my anima in creation, to extract it, and to see where it took me in painting.
Exposing my shortcomings, my contradictions, my attempts, my mistakes, to share what we can learn from being put in danger, this is what I propose in this exhibition where those who have known my work since my beginnings do not s will not find there.
In my process, I stopped my paintings when I no longer understood them. I wanted to paint the unknown in the strongest sense. By focusing on this misunderstood, I believe that I am getting closer to myself. There is no longer an accumulation of references, nor "looking for Charlie", nor even a demonstration of know-how or pareidolia. There is no longer any desire for progress or consistency.
Clearly I am showing difficulties. This is also a form of ethical requirement. It may be naive, but I also see a form of re-enchantment in it.
Ask yourself why we keep imprinted in our memory memories of meadows, rivers, seaweed, depths.
To paint, for me, is more than ever going down into oneself, because the surface of the lake is full of dead leaves and so you have to dive deep, where the imagination is no longer condemned by ridiculous torments. , even if it is at the risk of encountering a neutrality that could well make one think of nothingness.
In my paintings, one can believe that I repeat genres of landscapes with variations. It's the case. Everything remains to be done and everything will always remain to be done. It is a way of opposing the idea of a total theory in painting which is often satisfactory today. That such a fantasy can arise in people's minds says a lot about our time.
Any new artistic proposal is inevitably a mistake. So obviously I'm wrong, but I'm surprised that it can surprise.
To paint is to accept being wrong. In a positive version, it is knowing that what you think you will find one day will be replaced the next day. I agree with this neat idea. Besides, tomorrow we will see a new exhibition. I like anomalies and I hope my paintings are. The anomalies that we prefer are always those whose explanation we would like to know first.

Louis Paul Ordonneau