Souvenirs d'Oh !

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How can we understand what we do not know?
    How do we imitate without having to freeze?
    How can we deceive the stimulated gaze and direct its attention towards new ideas? 

From visual impressions to mental representations, Souvenirs d'Oh ! is the echo of fluid contemplation. It is a verbal proposition. Here, the verb is action, like the gesture in motion that marks and reveals the hidden motifs that lie in the mind of the creator. The verb in thought is therefore nothing other than the gesture that traces and expresses an idea.

Thinking of the verb in images means depicting the action in progress (sliding, breaking, rolling) where the subject physically moves through time and space. But here, movement is frozen, at a halt. And the Souvenirs d'Oh !, as they appear, are intended to evoke this state that was, inhabited by the gesture from which the motif is born, then evolves and finally freezes in the weave of the paper. 
In this way, the motifs, laid down on the mounted sheets, become the memory of a gaze animated by these visual phenomena, evolving in the natural environment.

In this context, fluid contemplation is to be understood as an intimate and philosophical discourse inspired by phenomenological observation: it is a time for poetic reflection on the phenomenon of the refraction of light as it passes through liquid matter.   

If technique can restore the image of a memory, it can also speak of the gaze that retains the memory. So, painting a reflection or a ripple evokes the idea of apparent movement. This movement, in Souvenirs d'Oh ! is about water: water that circulates, that moves forward and wavers at the whim of obstacles, currents and the wind. And like the mind, water is fluid when the thought always runs free, while it stops and consolidates like the thought that crystallises, where the fixed idea arises. But here, in these contemplations, the water flows and moves forward without ever surrendering, neither blocked nor frozen at the foot of any idea.

In the studio, technical experimentation is constant, and the craft's tools become an extension of the body in action. So, in the studio, I am constantly striving towards an organic form rich in sincere expression and fluid energy. And, driven by this need, it is towards a synaesthetic quest that I move forward, uninhibited, and create.
Outside, I think of Barthes, Bergson, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. I observe and think about the way they look at things and the questions that come to me. Then, like Bachelard, I dream, drowned in the flow of thoughts that arise, follow one another and link up.

Souvenirs d'Oh ! is therefore a work of after-memory, a poem made up of images and a narrative extracted from gestures, as well as the expression of a naive wonder for what remains beautiful when the world goes up in flames and solastalgia surfaces. It is an expression of astonishment that resonates and escapes, like air bubbles that rise and rise and rise and then burst: Oh !

Jérôme Boccia, translated by Michael Almeida Machado