The music in suspension seems ethereal, barely audible, just a background noise, the notes evaporate, and Jérôme Séguin, a composer, bassist, and double bassist, orchestrates this exhibition where a young artist, Eliz Barbosa, showcases her works at the Depardieu gallery until December 10th.
When we need to critique a painter and their work, it’s a daunting task. How to approach their work and make it understandable to the public? In a way, Eliz Barbosa has helped us. Her paintings are not painted in the usual sense; no, she has written the colors to the rhythm of music.
This drip, of shades and tones, comes to settle or freeze on the canvas by the randomness of the notes, each note being a color, how do you handle eighth notes and sixteenth, or even thirty-second notes? Simply by layering the colors. The artist listens to the musician and transcribes the sounds, a synesthesia; Eliz evokes Kandinsky and Scriabin for us. Her paintings would thus be musical scores. The colors harmonize and diffuse. This exhibition stimulates both hearing and sight.
We listen to the paintings and watch the music. The alchemy seems impossible and yet Eliz Barbosa has fully succeeded. Musical instruments are represented, and we find ourselves in the heart of an orchestra, and the concert takes place in three dimensions, giving the audience the source of the note, we see it being born, blossoming, and melding with another note, thus giving the melody.
The artist here spells out the notes like the letters of a difficult word; she makes the fusion of sounds and harmony accessible to us. In this way, one can distinguish an Adagio and a concerto. Eliz Barbosa is a conductor whose baton is a brush and the score a painting.
Thierry Jan
