The "rectoversé" page

" A traditional canvas gives what it proposes from the start and banishes the other hidden " side". Thus it very quickly reminds us of the mystery of its origin. If it poses too many questions or disturbs, the spectator will flee away from what disturbs him or raises questions and will focus on trying to establish what the artist was attempting to achieve through the work: " What did he mean? What type of man is he to paint that? ". MdC surprises the spectator and mobilizes him by the simple fact that: looking at the visible first side of a "rectoversé" painting, he is instantly encouraged to look at the other side, given the way the work occupies the space around it: " What has the artist put there? "

The artist, in what he gives us to see, says " there is something else to see " and the openings grab us towards the other side, where the work against the wall " hides " something about which the spectator can speculate... In the discovery of the second side, the meaning of the first will be requestioned and redeveloped: the work will thus be known by the spectator and made 'his own' (or rejected) even more so than with a traditional work...

"Rectoversion", while making the spectator much more active vis-a-vis the work in his search for meaning by setting him at a distance from the artist's personal reasons, enables him to build a personal meaning rather than to seek the meaning for the artist and to conform to it...

The openings open various dimensions according to whether they fill up with light or darkness... They represent a vacuum, places that the artist didn't occupy in the pictorial expression, areas where he abandons his desire for power through representation..."

Fabrice Bianchi
psychologist and trainer

Metaphysics and rectoversion

" MdC's work is not the prolongation of his ego or the simple use of a technique, therefore however beautiful or ugly it may be, it is an abandonment, a full integration in art. A letting go where all the aspects of the being are concerned. A dive. A certain shamelessness shows through. Nothing is hidden any more, nothing is held back. One doesn't know where the object and the subject stop. There is neither means nor end or, at least, what is means is the end and what is the end is the means. This is a provocation because it leads the spectator to position himself in relation to his own commitment. " Where does your glance go? " joined by " Who are you really? ". MdC's work challenges not aesthetically but ontologically. " Passer by, where are you in terms of your own initiation? " Here is all the teaching that transpires...

The artist's intention is to mark the fact that this opening is alive, materially real and not just symbolic and virtual. "Rectoversion" is a living body, the opening is its heart... The exit of the opening isn't a psychological exit point but quite to the contrary, the presence of a total lack of ego, although it is revealed - it is the prerogative of art -, by a projection, a prolongation of the ego that are the two sides of the work...

" Turn your eyes over-inside you, when you pass the wall of the wall, when you exceed beyond your vision, then you see... nothing". Léo Ferré sings and prophesises using these words, "Metaman" in front of the eternal ! Couldn't one adopt this exhortation as an official epigraph of rectoversion? "

Alexandre L'Hôpital-Navarre,
extracts from " Metaphysics points of view on Rectoversion ".

Openings in "rectoversion"

" In "rectoversé" paintings, in fact the openings give the painting life. "
Jean Cazaré,
Senior member of the artists of Lézignan-Corbières (age 86), concerning the August 2001 exhibition.

" Here is the post of "the watchers", a hollow to be lived in one which is called hope... It is necessarily an empty space within oneself to leave room for what cannot be communicated, only true word... Precisely, this opening of "rectoversion" reveals itself to me as the gate of hope..."
Sr Sandrine

- 'quotation of the month' (click at the top of the page on the right) : LEO FERRE -
- "The 'rectoversé' page" N°2, September 2001 -
- contemporary paintings, sculptures and writings -

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