Fabienne Verdier- Retables, Waddington Custot, London - Flipbook - Page 19
structure everything in our world: the ebb and flow of tides, the summits
of mountains, the form of plants, the dance of the winds. The shaping of
forms in space is not governed by the laws of Euclidean geometry but by
the influence of gravitation and its effects. It might be said that in China,
the brush works in opposition to how it is used in the West. Instead of
being held diagonally and lightly charged with colour as the composition
progresses, it is saturated with just enough ink required for each stroke
and positioned vertically above the surface. The painting is subject to the
laws of gravity: the artist’s gestures embrace the constant gravitational
flow. Factors such as the amount of ink absorbed by the brush, the ambient
temperature, the altitude and the artist’s geographic location collectively
determine the speed of the flow. In France, the science that studies the flow
of matter is called rheology, yet the country’s pictorial tradition favours the
application of colour by brushstroke. On her return from China, Fabienne
Verdier felt lost, the roots of another culture so entangled with her European ones. The spirit of Lao Tzu had encroached upon that of Leonardo,
and she could no longer see clearly. Yet, this disorientation proved essential
to her quest. She had departed France to liberate herself from the confines
of mimetic representation, which held no value in her pursuit to capture
the vitality of life. It was not a question of grafting another civilisation’s
techniques onto her own but rather of infusing the spirit of calligraphy into
her contemporary painting practice. The tension between these contrasting philosophies could only be reconciled within herself; it was enough to
make anyone falter.
Chang Lu
Lao Tzu on his Water Buffalo
16th century
Fabienne Verdier let me wield the enormous paintbrush she manoeuvres
every day using a set of bicycle handlebars. This tool, which she designed
in its entirety as she developed her practice, hangs from the ceiling via
cables on a network of rails that grant her full freedom of movement in
every direction. Its bristles, crafted from untrimmed horsehair, facilitate
the fractal effects distinctive to her work. The brush can hold up to thirty
kilos of paint. When the instrument is launched into space, its weight generates such movement that it is immediately evident that it is the brush
which governs the pace of the operation. The exercise requires embracing
a loss of control, surrendering to and colluding with a force beyond one’s
grasp, which must be yielded to. It’s not so much a question of manipulating
the brush’s swing than of merging with it, becoming one with the brush.
“Dancing in your chains,” as Nietzsche wrote, involves placing trust in what
cannot be controlled (the gravitational dynamic). In the creative process,
there exists a productive sense of loss, a descent into the abyss within us
that demands an unlearning of acquired skills. We are no longer defined
by being right-handed or left-handed, Confucian or Cartesian, but wholly
belong to the vitality that defines our existence.
THE SENSE
OF GRAVITY
Leonardo da Vinci
Self-Portrait
1515
No one perceives the contours of life more keenly than those who have
passed over to the other side. The Vanitas genre is a stark reminder of
this. In China, Fabienne Verdier confronted death twice. One morning at
the Chongqing School of Fine Arts, she lost consciousness, awakening in
a run-down and overcrowded hospital with patients lying on the floor. In
the delirium of illness she saw her end approaching, far from her homeland, in what was almost a morgue inhabited by small rodents. A few years
later, in Beijing, she agreed to dine in a cheap restaurant with an impecunious friend who wanted to thank her. The rotten meat served that
evening killed several customers. For months, Fabienne Verdier hovered
between life and death, almost unable to feed herself, her liver half consumed, like a modern Prometheus. Sensing her imminent departure, she
embraced the notion of her own mortality. For her, there was no greater
acceptance than this – welcoming that most alien of concepts, non-being,
while feeling contradictory forces coexist within her body. A point of
no return had been passed. Her acute awareness of mortality, forged
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