War way, 2018

Didier Guerandelle  

“For me, abstract painting means the big bang, the point of nothingness where a universal material takes shape. Humus formless, informal, it is the cradle of the shaping of an intelligence. I made the decision to put a shape by drawing, the one I want to see. The line will be his skeleton, the one that will now be part of my daily life. The skeleton allows the humus to move to enhance its food. Humus invents the solid structure, and deception can arise. My universe is inhabited by distorted portraits, poorly designed, in need of details, parts of bodies, hands, atrophied feet. My breathing quickens, I get nervous, preoccupied with the meaning of my figuration. I am well in this workshop, full of hope to paint, to succeed in this painting, my colors are there. I am concentrated, I would like to stop thinking, yet it's the opposite ... All my life passes in front of me, all my life except, which is filtered by my amnesia. Time-lapse movie ... certainly stimulating thoughts. I think of the people I met, of the glances exchanged furtively, of the swaying movement of a woman, a handsome man, a sentence that I would have read, that I would have been told, but especially on a date. you ... there at the end of the day. This witness, this viewer, who, through the depths of his eyes, will bring him to life. Sensual, aggressive, bitchy or spiritual, maternal, she will touch him. I have to speed up, so as not to miss anything, as in a trance. My gestures do not reflect, a woman comes, she takes shape, she darkens, brightens. It's summer, the swifts have stopped their strident ballet, a storm explodes. I listen to Mozart, it's a mass, a funeral, yet she has to live, I want a resurrection. I am drunk, absorbed in his spirit vapors of turpentine and linseed oil. In an hour, Laurent is coming to see me. He's a viewer. My new character is here. I'm at the window, cigarette at the corner of my lips. The weather is good, the storm is calming down, even disappearing. The swifts come back to dance in this new world of coniferous scents. The doorbell. Laurent. For the moment, all my paintings are done on paper, I mix pigments with polishing wax. Laurent likes the theater, he plays at Job's, Tibergin too. He loves books, I mean he loves reading, he impresses me for the awareness he has of the world we live in, the knowledge about almost everything; the fact that he looks, that he dissects, that he dissects, but above all that he questions himself. He's asking me questions. The answers I give him are always made to give a sense of life to the subject painted on the canvas, by opting most often for the whole and its opposite, its coming and going. There is the person who looks at the finished image, with in memory the journey he made to meet her. There is the person who looks at the finished image, remembering the journey of the brush: the performer. I would like to escape the stillness. I insist on the memory of its execution because it is through it that the painting becomes a mobile dimension, vibrant but above all that escapes, to become a captivating area. Because from the moment the viewer's eyes have appropriated the image, from the moment the secrets of its composition are discovered, it is over, the canvas joins the world of the still. She no longer stimulates this gaze. "