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A CHORAL WORK
Summary
The plurality of self
A countercurrent
A conceptual meaning
An atlas of the unfathomble
What's out of reach
I have forced myself to contradict myself
in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
Marcel Duchamp
1 / The plurality of self
It doesn't sound like you !
Everyone has heard this absurd sentence at one time or another.
What can we do with this "it", with what is not simply acceptable, outside conventional frameworks and received ideas?
No one is surprised that we don't talk in the same way, in the same register, to a 5-year-old child, a 40-year-old adult or about a film in an internal dialogue outside a cinema. The opposite would be worrying.
Similarly, what are we to make of our plural desires, for something else, for elsewhere, for differences, for divergences?
From 2008 onwards, with his encounters with Cy Twombly, Elisa Brune, Edouard Glissant and the reading of Fernando Pessoa and Marcel Proust among others, Séroux saw his research take on a considerable conceptual extension, at once scientific, artistic and literary.
Painting, composing, and writing: run through me. That is the adventure of being alive.
Henri Michaux
Meeting collectors, the first of whom was the Belgian René Withofs at the end of 1980, made him appreciate the excellence of the pluralism that many of them develop with intelligence.
By contrast, the repetitive approach of many artists, based on a desire for recognition, is hard to resist. A graphic line, a technique, a process, and that's it?
"I" IN "US"
Two plays by William Shakespeare cite the same obvious fact:
I am not what I am.
> In "Othello" (Act 1, Scene 3): Iago utters this phrase to express his hypocrisy and duplicity. It illustrates the complexity of his character and the way he hides a large part of his true personality.
> In "Twelfth Night" (Act 2, Scene 4): The statement is made by the character of Feste, the play's madman, about the masks that people wear in all circumstances.
WHO SAYS "I" IN US ?
This essay by Claude Arnaud shows how the great 'factories' that have produced and sculpted the classic postures of social identities since Antiquity - religion, homeland, environment, sexual gender - have largely, and fortunately, lost their know-how. Identity is no longer inherited. Identity is no longer inherited; it is now acquired by those who wish to exercise their free will. Today, our "life scenarios", more open and varied than in the past, profoundly enrich our potential. The works presented here bear witness to this and reflect it.
2 / COUNTERCURRENT
THE VIEWPOINT OF PSYCHIATRIST ERIC BERNSTEIN.
Between the 1950s and 60s, Eric Berne founded transactional analysis. He studied personality by identifying three distinct ego states: the Parent Ego, the Adult Ego and the Child Ego. Each state has its characteristic thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Analyzing the interactions between these three states provides a better understanding of the cognitive subtleties of each individual's personal and interpersonal dynamics.
The verbal and non-verbal relationships between these Ego States constantly enrich our.
Eric Berne also developed the notion of "psychological games", which occur when more or less psycho-rigid individuals cultivate repetitive behavioral patterns based on beliefs and unconscious normative scenarios that are very often destructive.
AN ARTISTIC COUNTERCURRENT
These repetitive patterns can be found everywhere in the history of art. Many artists develop a visual code that they repeat over and over again.
To satisfy the critics, the market, and social recognition, everything is good to exist under the cover of obsessive storytelling.
Two precedents
GERHARD RICHTER
"I have average health, average height (1.72 m) and average good looks. I mention this because you need these qualities to be able to paint good pictures." Gerhard Richter / Text from 1966
Born in Dresden in 1932, this polymorphous German painter, a monument of contemporary art, sometimes tackles figurative subjects and abstract works. Here are three keys to reading his work:
Aesthetic pluralism.
Richter explored a wide variety of artistic styles and techniques throughout his career. For example, he alternated between abstract and figurative painting.
Reflection on perception:
He questions the way we see and interpret the world around us by creating works that appear both realistic and blurred, abstract and concrete. This exploration of visual perception is reminiscent of philosophical concerns about how we construct our reality through our senses.
The dialectic between chance and control:
Richter also uses techniques of chance, such as scraping the paint or blurring the image. This dialectic between chance and control can be interpreted as a reflection on the tension between spontaneity and planning.
STANLEY KUBRICK
In cinema, Stanley Kubrick stands as an extraordinary filmmaker, not the least due to the great diversity of film genres he delved into throughout his life.
Formal experimentation
Kubrick pushed the boundaries of narrative. He dabbled in innovative filmmaking techniques, including visual composition, editing, cinematography, and the use of music to craft unique visual experiences.
Genre diversity
He directed films spanning a wide array of genres, ranging from science fiction ("2001: A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange") to war film ("Full Metal Jacket"), passing through film noir ("Lolita") and psychological drama ("The Shining"). His ability to immerse himself in various genres serves as a compelling example of his formal pluralism.
Adaptability
He was renowned for his adaptability to the requirements of each project. He took the necessary time to acquaint himself with source materials (books, novellas, etc.) and devised creative means to bring these stories to the big screen.
Image Mastery
His command of imagery stands as a central element of his formal diversity.
Exploration of Universal Themes
While Kubrick delved into a wide array of subjects and genres, he frequently explored universal themes: failure, violence, technology, madness, and the human condition. These overarching concepts are found in numerous works, regardless of the specific form they take.
3 / A CONCEPTUAL MEANING
As a reminder
Art is always conceptual if it is about something other than decoration, which is a craft.
Leonardo da Vinci's quote is clear:
"La pittura è cosa mentale",
painting is a thing of the mind.
Never confuse subject and object
- The subject: Whatever the technique used, the subject is never more than a support - a pretext for the essential: style, form, innovation.
- The object: works that count open the door to something 'unprecedented', that will change our world and our vision of it.
Most of the works deal with a subject that is never the final object of the research. At most, it is a pretext for a conceptual adventure and the pleasure of uncovering unthought.
Painting, in the broadest sense of the term, is the medium of research, hidden in colour, and showing its nose.
AN EXAMPLE
The subject of these 4 inks is female orgasm, framed on faces for a fraction of a second.
The object is elsewhere.
The aim is to study what is known in cognitive science as 'ambiguity reduction', i.e. how these inks are interpreted by the viewer.
How our gaza tell us
Doubts may arise: pleasure or pain?
- For some, the evocation of pleasure is obvious and jubilant.
- For others, the suffering is obvious and repulsive.
Ambiguity reduction
In cognitive science, this phenomenon refers to the process by which individuals seek to eliminate or minimize uncertainty and confusion in their understanding of information or stimuli, using cues, contexts or signals to arrive at a clearer and more precise interpretation. This makes sense of the information received, simplifying complex information to facilitate decision-making and understanding.
Cognitive bias
Doubts about interpretation can lead to tendencies to perceive things selectively, based on emotions or absurd beliefs.
Cognitive biases can lead to irrational or inaccurate decisions and incorrect judgments by favoring certain information over others. They can negatively influence our behaviour, causing us to overreact or underreact. They contribute to the persistence of stereotypes and prejudices, preventing us from learning new information or correcting erroneous beliefs. They lead to misunderstandings and communication problems.
Working with images of female orgasms invites us to reflect on how we perceive things when they are not unambiguous.
4 / an atlas of the unfathomable
27 january 2014 - Strait of Magellan
Geographic portrait
Séroux is a discreet wanderer, a jovial cyclist, eccentric everywhere, a Phileas Fogg doubled as a Passe-partout.
He travels around Europe slowly, from the island of Ikaria in Greece, where he studies the concept of the fall of Icarus, to the nearby island of Leros, where he studies the history of confinement and the psychiatric system. The island's migrant camps.
The erupting island of La Palma and Reunion Island interest him, as do the cities of Berlin, Madrid and many others.
We saw him working for a time in Argentina along the N40 from south to north, or in Chile in the footsteps of Pablo Neruda in Valparaiso.
He returned to Polynesia, the Marquesas Islands and California to see the works of Frank Gehry, China in Shanghai, Japan in Kyoto, Australia from Perth to Tasmania via Sydney and the outback. We've seen him in the Moluccas and the Svalbard archipelago, but above all, he's elsewhere.
As part of his work on French Theory, we have seen him follow La Tranche by the coast, in France, going to Angoisse, Paradis, Juif, La Rencontre, etc.
Everywhere he painted, drew or photographed all sorts of forms of emptiness, distance and incomprehension under different names, indifferent to the climate of the moment.
It combines a trip around the world with an inner journey
5 / WHAT iS OUT OF REACH
Can the immeasurable be thought of, and if so, how?
The ancient Greek mathematicians wanted everything to be rational, starting with numbers, the expression of harmony. But what about the number Py, for example, with its infinite decimals? So there is something immeasurable in the world of numbers, as there is everywhere. These "irrational" numbers can be approximated by rational numbers, without ever coinciding with one of them. Infinitely elusive.
Un horizon peut reculer. Mais il reste indépassable.
We don't know, understand
that which we can to some extent reinvent.
Henri Bergson
Thought and motion
