Fabienne Verdier- Retables, Waddington Custot, London - Flipbook - Page 24
le printemps? Était-ce l’été? (Was it Spring? Was it Summer?) works will
create in the gallery, buzzing like a silent beehive, exciting each of our
senses without our being able to unravel why, and affecting the rest of the
space. The largest of the five has a second title: Le Rideau des horizons (The
Curtain of Horizons). An ambiguous message. “Colour is where our brain
and the universe meet”, wrote Cézanne. But what are they saying to each
other? The mystery is total. In my living room, I contemplate the meaning
behind the colours around me. This yellow is ambiguous. Initially, I saw
it as a sun capable of spreading the invincible power of life. But through
the celebration of light, I sense a looming threat. The black line running
through Le Rideau des horizons is as menacing as the flight of crows in one
of Van Gogh’s most famous works. The scratches surrounding its advance
give the line the appearance of a swarm of bees in survival mode. In the
last third of the work, their energy diminishes dramatically, but the painter
has left their future up in the air. The question of rebirth or decline remains
unresolved. The black crosses the yellow like a basso continuo, giving a low
note to the swing of vitality.
In another of her Walking Paintings, earth and water converge to conjure
a magnificent dragon, its vigilance palpable on a grey background. In each
piece, disorderly paths hint at potential vanishing points or fault lines.
The current is furiously whipped up. An excess of adrenaline disrupts
the unison. Amidst such destabilisation, life itself revolts. In times of
profound peril, what can art do but champion the spirit of creation against
overwhelming disorder? The artist weaves her fears into the process of
continual transformation to which she devotes her days. In the guise of a
wise alchemist, Fabienne Verdier knows that she is assimilating a network
of fragile balances into her mesh. One wrong step would be catastrophic.
In one series of works, the line becomes white. Is this a desire to reverse
the course of things? Or just musing? A return to the enchantment of the
early days? The resetting of a damaged world? The wisdom of the light that
does not bend in the face of the irrevocable? The options are varied. For the
exhibition “Ainsi la nuit”, presented at the Parisian Galerie Lelong in 2019,
Fabienne Verdier began the Énergie blanche cycle. From the foam of the
wave to the turbulence of the clouds, she delved into flurries of whiteness
against a ground of darkness. Their milky quality was truly dynamic. Seen
from space, the swirls of the Earth’s atmosphere look like creamy smoke.
Down here, where the beauty of the snow is as fleeting as it is violent,
each morning is sacred. Reflecting on this, I feel as though I have journeyed backwards through the levels of the Divine Comedy, gradually losing
my definition and dissolving into a bath of perceptions that transcend my
understanding. The clarity of infinity tends toward an indiscernible extinction. Art can at least have that effect, I tell myself: by advancing gently, it
offers another way of living, closer to what is essential and away from the
clamour that accelerates the melting of glaciers. Through the simple observation of reproductions of works of art, I had travelled to the edge of reality
within my own home. The impermeability of the walls and the insuperable distances dissolved, as if the most fertile matter in the universe had
emanated from the depths of my mind.
THE GROUND
AND THE LINE
Absolving oneself in the plunge. That’s how, ideally, I imagine creation.
When Fabienne Verdier was asked to exhibit works that would dialogue
with Colmar’s Issenheim Altarpiece and was thinking about how she should
proceed, she was struck by the appearance of a rainbow while watering her
garden. The Issenheim scene, like something out of a saint’s life, is based
on purely objectifiable elements. She did not yet know how to orientate her
work around the particularly macabre image of the Crucifixion. Matthias
Grünewald had painted it at the start of the 16th century to “comfort”, it
is said, those suffering from the terrible evils of the “plague of fire”. At
that time, alleviating suffering through imagery of greater suffering
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Vincent van Gogh
Wheat Field with Crows
1890
Domenico di Michelino
The Portrait of Dante,
Allegory of the Divine Comedy
1465
