Ce que vous aimez détester,
Love – Hate…
The verbs of passion, emotion, body and soul. What are my tastes? Is taste a choice?
Dionysus is the figure who imposes neither choice, nor taste, nor judgement. He represents exaggeration, excess.
God of the vine and of wine, madness and immoderation,
a hero who dies and is reborn, the symbol of life.
He is the figure of the Other, of that which is different, perplexing, disconcerting, anomic, and an eternal symbol of life.
And it is life that is at issue here:
The life that the artist attempts to infuse within matter;
bringing matter to life despite all opposition
even by overdoing or underdoing it, by going astray, by attempting the impossible, by extending his limits, choices, or tastes.
Paradoxically, even if the artwork is the result of a series of choices, in the end the artist has no other choice but to do what must be done.
Even beyond his own tastes
and it is often when the artwork has been completed in spite of everything and even in spite of its creator’s incomprehension that life emerges, along with truth.
The same must be said for the beholder.
Art has never progressed and will never do so.
On the other hand, the gaze does evolve.
It is this gaze that we must, as beholders, always call into question, and this must be done despite our background, our education, or our sense of disgust.
This exhibition is a presentation in which, I hope,
life emerges, with all of its contradictions,
ugliness spars with beauty, subject with non-subject, form with formlessness, laughter, ridicule, death,
and always passion:
life itself.
Thibault Hazelzet
