The Shadow - La Sombra

The shadow speaks, the silhouette reveals something about the figure, and at some point, to the figure, when it looks at itself in a sort of dark mirror; it comes to life both ways, as the object of a story and as a conscious entity. The ancient origins of representation come from the silhouette, and the first picture of the soul, probably as well.

 

Through this decoding exercise, we grasp the formidable capacity to create space and in it a locus out of minimal visual clues, in spite of the intentional blurring of the Trompe-l’œuil on its unfinished or untidy, hastily brushed edges.

 

Once the popup opens, like a miniature desk-opera stage, and even if the figure seems crushed against its shadows in a tight space, a form of interactive drama begins.

 

Rather than holding on to zones of photo-realism the eye should instead traverse the field of graphic registers and styles of visual clues to set its view instead on the theatrical display with its set of variations, the interactions between the figure and its shadows: the cage, erection or castration, disability, flight, contradiction, recognition, fright, escape, suspension… or it will just see the figure surfing on a desk with waves of unattended papers, the tentacles of which seem to grab it by the stilts.

 

The series of fifty oil paintings I started creating in April 2021 came out of the observation of a small welded iron figure and its silhouette, on a desk, under a single light source; the shadow cast on the surfaces around it gives us elements to reconstruct a 3D impression of the figure, a kit to build like a popup stage.

 

The late Michael Dimino’s amazing little creature (2010?) has the capacity to project a vast range of emotions and meanings, and questions, depending on the angle of the light source and the position of the piece. A little mess of desk papers and pads, slips, bills and notes, with a large drawing bad backing, forms the stage for an expressionist drama constructed technically, in strict terms, as an illustration of what happens between the figure of this remarkable little sculpture and its shadow on a desk.