DIALOGUES AND OEUVRES AU NOIR

Forty years separate the two sets of works, to be seen in Lutry from January 10th. The first, from 1984, has never been shown in Switzerland. The second was created over the past two years. Two periods distant in time, both marked by distress, anguish or anger.

Here the artist returns to paper, this fragile medium she favored at the beginning of her career, and the works from 1984 bear witness to it. On paper the artist made herself, wash and India ink combine to express the paradox of these dialogues that are not dialogues.

Immediately, we can say that the whole is not foreign to us, as we find in it constituent elements of the style the artist would develop throughout her career. However, the form challenges us. Each work is clearly divided in two. The kinship of the two parts is evident but so is the rupture. They are related through chosen colors, flat areas, lines, signs, but the message is scrambled. Forms cut up the space and oppose each other on both sides. Lines are sketched, drawn, but remain desperately empty, they are uniformly colored, filled with illegible or inverted writing, sometimes deliberately crossed out.

Writing cannot occur, it organizes its own destruction. The artist, at this moment in her life, finds herself in New York where she is going through a difficult period. She feels abandoned by her family, her friends who don't answer her letters. Communication is broken. It is then that on paper, she inscribes her distress, her incomprehension, her anger too.

When we approach the second series, we are first taken aback. These grays, this black... Renée-Paule has accustomed us to a festival of colors, so this is a strange experience. And then, it is emotion that overwhelms us amidst these fine gradations, from absolute black to white passing through so many grays, which the Japanese paper highlights.

We find the artist's vocabulary, the plants, grasses, grains soaring upward. Verticality is preserved, but darkness has crept in, the work is transformed by anguish. Like a pause in movement, white, black, red flowers stand out. On the black ink, a brilliant red chisels a motif. Small gray or purple silhouettes, like apparitions, wander in the night. One of them is saturated with words, but the message is illegible. Incommunicability is patent, solitude poignant, the characters are lost in the darkness.

M. Saint-Siffre