It is an unprecedented exhibition that the Depardieu Gallery is offering us at the start of this autumn.
Painter Max Charvolen presents his work at this gallery for the first time. Max begins by explaining his approach, providing keys to understanding his work. “I reverse 3D, I start from the latter to arrive at a bi-dimensionality.”
From urban architectural forms, we arrive at a horizontal representation of elements: walls, doors, stairs, facades, or cramped spaces of often unknown places. A structure is dismantled, showing it naked in its reality. The colors of the territory, the theme of one of the two films presented: yellow, red, green, blue, and black.
Each color has a well-defined position in the treated space. Facing the artist is yellow: sun, light, brilliance; on the west side, red: sunset, blaze; its opposite, blue: a calm and serene sky; below is the green: fields and pastures; above, black: a moonless and starless night. This film shot at the Fernand Léger Museum in Biot symbolizes the stairs. From their verticality, one arrives at horizontality.
We might think of a sentence by the poet and writer critic Raphaël Monticelli: “The taste of salt is sea, sweat, and tears,” thus defining the work of Max Charvolen. Salt or spirit, the sea or infinite space, sweat or the work of the fisherman and tears as if echoing Hemingway’s novel (The Old Man and the Sea).
The second film, more sober, black and white at the beginning, was shot in a villa in Cannes, a former property of EDF. There, the artist emphasizes the importance of space when it is necessary to transpose and cut the structure to make it a flat work.
Max Charvolen seems to want to draw inspiration from medieval painting where perspective did not exist. It would be too simplistic and reductive to define him this way. His approach is that of many painters. How many wanted to break free from the narrow frame of the canvas and its frame? Here it is a triangle and its four sides, how to surpass it? Perhaps with the use of both sides and the thickness of the canvas, here fabric.
We might unknowingly return to 3D, and the loop would be closed. The works made of fabrics, glues, painted with primary colors, will appear to the visitor as patchworks. The two looped films will explain the approach of this artist, a bit of a disciple of the group of the 70s, of Support-Surface of Viallat or Dolla.
His training as an architect is also a key to understanding his work. Max Charvolen was born in 1946 in Cannes. To conclude, we will quote Raphaël Monticelli “A fleur de sol.” The title of one of his art critique works. This perfectly sums up this exhibition. The Flower for its fragrance and beauty and the Ground for, although the artist doesn’t really appreciate this qualification, the plan, that of the architect.
An exhibition full of lessons and questions, a must-see at the Depardieu Gallery until October 31, 2015.
Thierry Jan.
