Hélène Duclos

Selective memory #3 - Hélène Duclos, 21st Century, Contemporary painting

2017

Oil on canvas Signed Unique work 1 / Hélène DUCLOS, 2016 – Artist Statement “Questioning the human condition and the position of being alive – What is i...

Oil on canvas Signed Unique work 1 / Hélène DUCLOS, 2016 – Artist Statement “Questioning the human condition and the position of being alive – What is i...

Oil on canvas Signed Unique work 1 / Hélène DUCLOS, 2016 – Artist Statement “Questioning the human condition and the position of being alive – What is it to be a living being? Who /...

Oil on canvas Signed Unique work 1 / Hélène DUCLOS, 2016 – Artist Statement “Questioning the human condition and the position of being alive – What is i...

2 oil paintings on canvas composing a diptyc Signed lower right by the artist Unique work 1 / Hélène DUCLOS, 2016 – Artist Statement “Questioning the h...

Oil on canvas Signed Unique work 1 / Hélène DUCLOS, 2016 – Artist Statement “Questioning the human condition and the position of being alive – What is it to be a living being? Who / what can we believe? Who / what can we trust? How real is our view of the world? And how is that perspective angled, and ultimately limited? These are the issues at the heart of my work as an artist. Painting, drawing, engraving and embroidery give me the freedom to approach my subjects from an ambivalent and flexible standpoint. I am building up a dynamic body of work, like pieces that you can put together in one way or another to shape different structures, pierced with numerous openings. And the title that I give each piece acts as a possible clue as to how to enter inside that system. I can portray both softness and monstrosities. I focus on the links and barriers lying between living beings and their surroundings, and evoke how permeable these connections are. My aim is not to create a visual documentary reporting fact, but rather immerse myself in observing everyday life, and in a host of images depicting real events (pictures, photos and videos). Instilled with these images, I can give a more personalized, unique and allegorical vision of the world around me. I am also interested in the key transition periods of human existence, those turning points that forge our identity within a family, a group, and society as a whole at the heart of a specific environment. I centre on what makes up and creates cohesion (rituals, myths and tales….), and indeed the opposite - what leads to life becoming shattered, hindered and frustrated (moving populations, exile and migration…) Amidst a landscape roaming with wild beasts and hybrid creatures, between love and separation, metaphors for our own desires and fears lie in hiding, or reveal themselves in the painted or embroidered spaces. Sometimes they are etched with lines, symbols and tiny architectural designs. These works might depict our inner landscapes, as if harking back to a primordial and cosmic point of origin. My most recent collections recreate the images of bodies or landscapes using abstract zones and figurative details that have no direct link with either anatomy or geography. Intimacy and the unspeakable are themes that run throughout my work, and I make sure to incorporate areas of both visual tension and relief, so as to give the viewer the space to project him or herself into the work. And here, such paradoxes can only be reached through the interplay between abstraction and figuration.” 2 / Thierry Delcourt Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author of works on the process of artistic creation, and the conditions of existential and social creativity : "Entering into the world of Hélène Duclos in her drawings, paintings, embroidery and words means letting yourself be carried away by a torrent towards strange shores of creation where only a few artists have ever dared to venture. As if perched on a watchtower on the threshold of different worlds, Hélène Duclos throws us out of our depth, plunging us into spaces filled with destitute mankind, and guiding us through her stem-like maze of a scheme, bristling with roots and clues. But the mystery here, like a poetic, human rebus that never ends, only compels us to take a closer look.” 3 / Hélène Duclos ‘s biography : After graduating from the Duperré School of Applied Arts in Paris with a degree in textile design, I set off on a six-month sea voyage from Vannes in Brittany, to Dakar. On returning to France, I set up my atelier...

Jamel Akib Born in Leigh-on-sea, Essex in 1965 to English and Malaysian parents, Jamel moved to North Borneo at the age of five. At thirteen he returned to England to pursue his edu...

Jamel Akib Born in Leigh-on-sea, Essex in 1965 to English and Malaysian parents, Jamel moved to North Borneo at the age of five. At thirteen he returned to England to pursue his edu...

Blue Statue, 2020 "For Blackburn, the Western’s heroic drama, good-versus-evil narrative, and assertive landscape are challenges to face in her work. These aspects of film can overwhelm a painting, thus distancing the viewer from the art. She wants the art to be dominant; “Painting wins,” she declares. She finds this happens when a painting possesses what she terms “classical balance.” By this the artist means that everything is where it needs to be compositionally—nothing can be changed—and “the whole can be seen at once.” Linda Blackburn...

Bisti Wash, 2020 "For Blackburn, the Western’s heroic drama, good-versus-evil narrative, and assertive landscape are challenges to face in her work. These aspects of film can overwhelm a painting, thus distancing the viewer from the art. She wants the art to be dominant; “Painting wins,” she declares. She finds this happens when a painting possesses what she terms “classical balance.” By this the artist means that everything is where it needs to be compositionally—nothing can be changed—and “the whole can be seen at once.” Linda Blackburn...

I am not afraid to define it as a metaphysical painting, - says Angelo Crespi - and right in the suffix "beyond" (in Greek "meta") also of the title "Oltremare" the intent to climb over the wall of the sensible and the real is revealed. There is another vein to which the new paintings of Nahmad refer and it is that of Romanticism, in the strong idea that art should represent the sublime, not the beautiful. The skies like John Constable, thick with purplish blue clouds (such as "Rainstorm over the Sea" of 1828 which anticipates by a century modernity), the stormy seas like William Turner, give the viewer the idea of infinity and vastness of nature compared to the finitude and misery of the human. If Caspar Friedrich...

Bai Shuai oil on canvas The river with Mountains 162 x 60 cm, 2022 Hand signed by artist About the Artist Bai Shuai was born in 1993 in Dezhou, Shandong...