The latest artworks by Jean Gaudaire-Thor are characterized by a return to spontaneity and simplicity
by Sam Beckett and Elena Vallorotto
IN THIS NEW STAGE OF HIS CAREER, WE CAN SEE THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN IDEA OF VOLUNTARY ABANDONMENT OF THE COMPOSITION and of a new kind of trace across the surface of the canvas. The sketch-like appearance of the whole body of work gives it a fluid and dynamic character. In some works pockets of resistance can be perceived. There are indefinable and unknown species of sailor knots, where any form of analysis comes up against the power of the unknown. In this space, no words can be put in place of the painting; no words can achieve what is said by the painting. What the artist is perhaps now trying to do is reach this point of final creation, where forms arrive autonomously, where there is no longer any need to deal with them directly, in a moment where reason, logic, knowledge flee from us and are confused with the irrational. Picasso once said, «You have to search for a long time in order not to have to make sense of what you do».
In some paintings such as ‘Tre Vele’ (Three Sails) or ‘Barche sul rosso’ (Sail Boats on Red) of 2014, you can find areas that are not painted, small reserves in which the artist allows you to see the texture of the canvas. You could call these areas “blanks”, an absence of colour or a type of threshold. These holes are obtained at the beginning of the work. Two or three of them are distributed on the surface of the canvas and sometimes only one remains at the end of the process. The reserves, often triangular, evoke the form of the sails of the boats, but also the fissures that are so characteristic of the works of the architect and Italian painter Lorenzo Bernini. It is appropriate to quote in this regard Jean Gaudaire Thor, «For me, these openings serve, in most cases, to keep, as long as possible, a virgin space free from any intrusion, as a clearing in which you can breathe, where you feel a breeze coming in from high seas».
(Jean Gaudaire-Thor, unknown knots – Barchemagazine.com – June 2015)
