Poetics of the wall

History of a metamorphosis and metamorphosis of a history.

A particularity of walls is that they exist less on their own than because of what is standing behind them, the beyond they create, the unknown they open and close ahead us.

What if, instead of getting around these walls, we actually looked at them, took them as objects, exact patterns of the photo and painting, or rather of this new artistic form which is computer-processed “photo-painting”. Jim D rose up to the challenge, with great virtuosity and splendour.

Agne’s Varda suggests it on her film on murals “Mur Murs” (literally “Wall Walls”). The wall murmurs, whispers, prompts words and freeds them. It is, in its roughness and unevenness, the very image of the man and of a history which alternate or superimpose best and worst, overflow and shortage, light and darkness. It sometimes has the purity of extreme youth, the weariness and disarray of old age, something of a sovereign aristocratism or of a plebeian modesty. In brief, it is palimpsest of signifiers. For Jim D, who forbids himself to take as subjects of his works the traditionally expected patterns – objects, portraits, scenery, landscape – always worthy of the photographic or pictorial ambition – the wall is, fundamentally, this something which is not recognised, or which barely is, which does not need any artistic attention. Provided we take its word, scrutinize its grain, hear what it echoes from the world, it expresses the nature and meaning of traces-bruises or richness it kept from its showdowns with events – storms, drought, wars – with humans, animals, vegetation, agrarian work, community links, traditional feasts, intimate feelings.

Without doubt, the wall is an image per se, but this image exceeds the wall delimited by the framing, letting us guess through everything it suggests what is outside the wall itself, a kind of “out of frame”, of which it is both the print and reflection.

Jim D’s work of art is then born from savoir-faire, expressions and quite peculiar imposed looks, turning the wall, or a fragment of wall, into an almost limitless mental landscape, where the outside world melts with the inside one, where the photography of the wall, which by definition tends towards resemblance, metamorphoses into poetic pictures depicting the imaginary of the artist.

Yves MORAUD – Professor Emeritus, University of Western Brittany, Brest

Exposition

My work

These “pictures-paintings” are a mix of colours, materials, sediments which organize walls of metal, concrete, stone. They become, through digital creation, a fresco which juxtaposes drawings, scans and colourisations of these materials.

This work also relates to time: materials’ porosity, faded colours. Thickness, volumes, density create interpretation filters where multiple contents give rise to a graphic project.

These walls work as a skin with a very strong structure and a fragile surface which allows time to engrave its print.

I turned it into a pictorial interpretation: a highlighting of details, of energies. A colourisation of some graphic designs. Images have a function: a proper intentionality in each site.

Every time, an idea, a writing can be found on each wall I could discover and transform.

Work in progress…