COVID daily
At a time when a virus brings the planet to its knees, when,
unable to cope, governments around the world are confiscating individual
freedoms, the artist recounts his confinement. The caging, with its golden
bars, perfectly illustrates this feeling of “luxury” prison, our new human
condition in 2020.
The triptych painting follows the rhythm of the painter's
day: there is a time for reading and reflection, another for creation and work,
then comes the night, time for rest and dreams. Absorbed by reading “Sapiens”,
the world's best-seller of the moment, the artist's mind can escape confinement
in the flutter of its wings. This history of Humanity brings us back to another
concern: after our species has succeeded in dominating the planet in order to
better destroy its resources of all kinds, what about our future associated
with that of the rest of life? ...
In the center of the canvas, we observe the painter at work.
The canvas in the web is still blank: will COVID inspire a new outbreak? This
need to fight against the disease on another ground that this one would also
like to annihilate? That of culture, this “non-essential” capital good ...
The panther and the orangutan appear as if to remind us that
there is more important than the consequences of COVID. The great ape has the
posture of a sage, it is a whistleblower that would warn us about our behavior
that puts biodiversity at risk.
In the last part of the painting, the sleeping artist is
watched over by three animals, like three fairies to whom one could attribute
ambiguous intentions. In these uncertain times, would the spider be a somewhat
frightening sword of Damocles, a dark omen, or rather a symbol of creativity
and regenerated feminine energy? Is the “white lady” a funeral bird or does she
carry a message of enlightening wisdom? Finally, the snake: additional threat
or symbol of regeneration, of possible rebirth after a critical phase?
Between anxiety-provoking reality and dreams elsewhere,
themes dear to the artist revisited.
