Braunschweig, Allemagne
Lichtparcours
mars 2009
Exposition Kunstwerein “Salves Hospes”
This piece is about the land of Braunschweig.
I have made it for the Salves Hospes exhibition as I did not want to show a model of what it would be, not being a designer or an architect, but being a painter this work stands as an original esquisse of what I might draw on the wall itself.
I picked up as a canvas one of the most meaningful relic of architecture of what has been a truly powerful city in the past… And certainly this 22,11 meters long piece of abandonned re assembled stones do not show up to curious people visiting the area , somehow that lost piece of medieval strategy resisted to Time as it was not needed to rebuilt the ruins of WW2… When I first came to Braunschweig, this little wall imposed itself as the most symbolic place I could work on in the idea of having this trace of Middle Age alive again.
Working with history, I was interested into the idea of bringing a part of it on that wall. When the breathing lion explodes and melt with the eagle, when the symbols of power get together and pattern the cape of The Emperor, when the red color invades the picture and leaks into the landscape of conquest, from dalmatica to robes, from Othon to Rembrandt, through the fine and clever blue eyes of the collectionneur duke. The music stands as a collage of multiple wind and string instruments, from roman horns to BWV cellos. They all mix as painting melts to create a musical time line.
And as a collection of signs, I use the Red as divine, the hair of lion to materialize the shadow of the wall, the stones of the wall to figure the varnished treasure of the Duke, the fence as a killing weapon protecting the city, the items of power as pictural elements pouring one into each other from antiquity to modern era. These free parts of heritage that feed our imagination and link the past to present.
Just like if Vermeer would meet with Kandinsky
XR