WE ARE MOVING
Representation, resulting from a mental image, cannot be abstracted from our beliefs, it betrays them. Convinced that denunciation, criticism and representation by the negative have their limits, I have chosen to celebrate what is positive and a kind of forced march optimism.
In a recent interview, George Condo suggested that artists should « try to find a way into their culture. A pinhole is enough space. If you can get through that pinhole, you can open up a very large territory of new and undiscovered aesthetic or de-aestheticized universe. You always find a big universe through a small little aperture. »*
Likewise when one looks at a work, it is often a detail that brings us into it. Elements borrowed from popular culture juxtaposed with others from History of Art can create this gap. An element becomes an entry point for others and allows you to get into narration.
But this thought of George Condo also evokes me perseverance, the will that is necessary to give in order to make one see the painting and all that there is in it.
We are moving, we move out, we move our body, we cannot stand still, we are in movement.
We are moving is also an ending rhyme that I have in my mind, the end of a rapper’s scansion, which echoes the hope that I want to make real in my paintings. The incredible optimism that is necessary to develop in order to get out from difficult social conditions is the one one cannot escape from if one wants to move forward, to improve oneself, to love and to change the world.
Thomas Agrinier
*George Condo, interview by Keith Estiler on hypebeast.com, 2017