33×30 cm, charcoal, white chalk corrugated cardboard
Like buried in the depths of this corrugated cardboard, which offers the grunge texture of a brown stained concrete background, or an old wood one, a teeming magma of almost indistinguishable figures are engaged in an unremitting battle, a metaphor for the conflict between the lower appetites and civilised behaviour in humankind, though it incarnates also all the wars of all times. Here, the infernal ride and fight deploys itself in an infinite space, the vertical grooves of the card punctuating the composition, and generating the specific dark hatches whose are the substrate of the scene.This drawing is haunted by runaway ghosts, whose the presence is indicated by the blank white halos superimposed to the primary surface, as signs of their supreme power. The support is torn, in several places, battered. A rare economy of means characterises this astonishing drawing, which is the extension of Michelangelo’s ”Battle of Centaurs” (1492) and of Picasso’s Centauromachies (”Fighting Centaurs”, 1959, for example), though here, the style of the artist exceeds these prestigious models, as it is more than innovative, engendering another way of envisaging creation, i.e, also with the certitude that ”a finitude of being must accordingly be assumed” (Heidegger) and that ”Future belongs to ghosts” (Derrida). This artwork, hence, beyond its plastic qualities, is a Thinking of the past and future of creation, and, ”merely”, an incredible advent everybody must question.
Delphine Costedoat
John Gorman 