Lucie Duban
LandE scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW representative feature of your canvass, as Un après-midi comme les autres. The way you to capture non-sharpness with an universal kind of language quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and memory. How would you define the relationship between abstraction and representation in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?
It ' s a good question. Actually, it ' s indeed a question of balance. The abstract part, weither it ' s in my series Natura or in my most obvious abstract paintings, plays a role in setting up a non-determined context thanks to colours and shapes. This enables me to set up a kind of a visual background which could make possible an escape from the reality for the viewer.
In order to arise some dream and escape, I indeed work to inject some interpretated elements, so they could recall for the viewers some familiar landscapes or imageries taken from Nature. But not in an obvious way otherwise i think it would be less interesting and less prone to lead to a state of escapism.
For instance, in Un après-midi comme les autres, I paint some elements that when put together could recall an animal figure, even if by looking at it, it doesn ' t look like anything we know. But it recalls natural forms, and that ' s what I want to create. Most of the time, I end up there by serendipity. I have no idea where I am heading to when I start. It ' s really a conversation.
So I would say that in the end abstraction and representation work together in order to counter-balance each other. I just try to reach this balance. I just simply want to avoid any truly figurative forms, because my main purpose is to provoke, if possible, some dreamlike and playful feelings. I hope I answered your question.
The dreamy quality that marks out your work inquires into the interstitial space between the subconscious and a conscious level, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a contamination the inner and the outside. It would seem that much of your work is designed to provoke an intellectual, non-narrative response and the brushstrokes that condense your visual vocabulary have a very ethereal quality. How do you view the concepts of the real and the imagined playing out within your works?
Well, thank you for saying this! It ' s what I wish to provoke in the viewer, this immersive experience which I refer to as an escape.
So the dream aspect, what we call“ onirisme” in french, it ' s paramount in my art. I believe it to be the basics of any Art actually. As an art lover myself, I tend to always be absorbed by artworks which convey this aspect. To enable viewers to dream it ' s just the best, really! Although, I would rather talk of a non-intellectual thing or rather an intellectual response on an emotional
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