Presentation | First rotation inside the tower

In 1980 I hesitated between sculpture and painting. I knew I couldn’t do both and had to decide one or the other, especially as a self tought artist. I ended up therefore on the path of sculpture. The idea of using colour remained either as accompanying little touchs or for the choice of appropriate tones in the wood work.
I have been working with metal for the past 6 years. Colour reinforced its presence in the plexiglass filters and the iron sheets but there was never any real pictorial composition (and this eventhough the rusted iron sheets do well with pigments and allow some superb transparency and rewriting?)
After covering up the Tower of Babel bringing out the rust motifs on the huge surface outside and inside the Tower was something that really got caught me. A lot of friends particularly painters encouraged me not to touch it to leave it like it was. There were like me struck by the strenght of those “fortunate” motifs. They were brown / red with intenses black intense blacks and materials effects.
I had helped this “fortunate effect” by cutting and putting together the metal sheets according to their motifs when covering the tower.
Inhibited by their warnings I started carefully on the outside first. Reassured by the first reactions I decided to left myself go in this kind of painter’s frenzy: a spiral reaching 6m20 with variations in its dimension and basic motifs. I decided to limit myself to the first outside rotation and to go up to 6m20 inside.
Starting from ground level (first rotation of 360°) my feeling of pleasure and enthusiasm grew following the rise of the rotations and juxtaposition.
The Tower of Babel does not tell a story nether a myth nor a fairytale. These paintings are just free and contemporary writtings.
You can see on the pictures presented by order of rotation (first rotation starting from the ground…) a great variety of styles often a long way from figurative but the composition and nods in the direction of the figurative seem to easily appeal to the imagination.
It seems that the “photographers” feel like duplicating pictures of little details but the actual visitors go inside the tower without caneras!
A chapter entitled “details” can be seen as well as two others :”lighting effects” and “pictures in-between-levels”.
A slide show opens each rotation but the pictures can be seen individually afterwards.

Presentation | First rotation inside the tower

sommaire des Fresques de Babel | summary of Frescoes inside Babel

First rotation inside the tower

First rotation : metal sheets touching the ground inside the tower.
For the base, I don’t’knew why Freud and his invention kept me company, maybe to give an outer dimension to Babelian times. Though rituals and every day life habits prove to be signs of a deep knowledge of man. But the language itself didn’t have this scientific distance not often debated about.
I think back here of those pharmaceutical laboratories whose recent attention was focused on traditional medecine underlines clearly the limits of a scientific approach and the concern they have to find anything that can make benefits nowadays.
The subconcious floats above this first level and the painting develops aroud three sceneries .
The first quarter sketches out a small group of people gathered, turned towards the public (audience?) but with no eyes, a kind of emergence.
Following it a second fresco in the shades of green brawn, black, blue muted almost combined with blurred forces wich seen to move, rather monstrous. The shape move in a kind of sea bed.
After the entrance (around 2 x 2m) and for more than 5m, there is a more abstract painting with colours coming towards us in little bits, creatin a whole, uncertain and complex.
Those bits create details linked together in which the eye wanders with delight and often lingers.
The composition as a whole results from a rich interactivity between rust and the painter. The painting which is about 10 square m. was done in 4 or 5 stages.
They were necessary in order to give to each part its tone and autonomy and give resonance to the whole.
In this abstract fresco pop out two or three faces or profiles. The borderline between abstract and figurative being always blurred to me.

Presentation | First rotation inside the tower

sommaire des Fresques de Babel | summary of Frescoes inside Babel