Collection: Alain Monvoisin

ABOUT THE HEADS

I like to work in series, long series most often, so that the project can blossom, assert itself, enrich itself with multiple variations and for the feeling, at the end, of having explored and then exhausted the purpose defined at the start. This so-called exhaustion is only the pretext for engaging, loaded with a new deal, on another series.

Painting is teeming with faces. But what is there before the face? A form that supports it, in this case the head, free of any distinctive feature, any expressiveness, any subjectivity. It is impossible to play with its form, reduced to a vague ovoid, sometimes mistreated, just with its color, its texture. From then on, unless you see it floating in a meaningless space, you have to create a context for it. This is where the series of "Heads" becomes a project that could be described as conceptually naive ! Placing these heads in situations that range from trivial to crazy, including more or less veiled allusions to the history of art or simple situations where shapes and colors dominate. I call them "forms of life". These forms of life are different from each other, extracted from various aesthetics, drawn from the history of art or from my imagination. They are arranged around the head with the concern to coexist and to constitute a coherent, if not harmonious, whole. Concern for the unexpected as well as lightness and a zest of humor…

However, the project is not only aesthetic, it stands out as an ambitious metaphor which would be to seek a structure allowing individuals of different origins to coexist...

THE WORK OF ALAIN MONVOISIN