Vincent Gicquel

For his second solo show at Galerie RX&SLAG in Paris, artist Vincent Gicquel presents a series of 14 new works that mark an evolution in his artistic practice. The chromatic palette now becomes the focus of his work. The almost caricatured quality of his previous characters fades, giving way to a more nuanced expression. Blending abstraction and expressionism with luminous colors, the artist creates a new pictorial space, deepening his exploration of landscape.

“Slaves without masters, that's what we are. We live without paying attention.

    Everyone lives an existence they don’t perceive. I paint pictures that sting—that’s their only reason for being. There’s no point in painting what we know; I only paint what we don’t see—the imaginary vanishing point, the point of incidence where we come to reflect ourselves.
Mirrors, beautiful mirrors, reflected images that’s what we see. Characters wandering in the painting, swaying in the universe, balancing on rickety hammocks, sitting on fragile lianas so many symbolic links that keep us alive. It is on these tilting edges, in these moments of fragility, that we pay attention. It is through the experience of the body that we become aware of death and, therefore, of life.
In this series, although the painting seems to have taken over from the characters, the bodies remain the nerve center of all the questions. Enmeshed in nature, often alone, they remain the only connection from which we make the world our own world. This cumbersome body, which we drag around like a burden attached to our spirit, is our last link with the outside world that resists us.

   And if the body and the mind are engaged in a never-ending war, in permanent opposition, it is at the heart of this oscillation that all my painting resides! Somewhere between this dying body and the spirit that has chosen the will to live. We have not been rejected by the gods; we are cursed by nature. Our bodies, by nature, have a tragic destiny. And the awareness of this inherently cursed body is the very essence of life.
  The strength of the spirit enables us to resist the forces of nature. To choose life is to decide to survive, to live without full knowledge of our bodies. We must vow to endure everything in this hellhole. It’s all a matter of balance of sitting with your ass between two chairs: between body and mind, between abstraction and figuration, between the visible and the invisible, between the world and your awareness of the world.
   You must choose nothing, accept the wandering, the oscillation. To try in vain to tame a recalcitrant reality is to condemn yourself to tension. Refrain from choosing a chair and stay alive."

- Vincent Gicquel