Description
The conceptualization of the revisited work "Adding a Landscape," inspired by Vincent van Gogh's painting "Lilacs," is part of a dynamic dialogue between contemporary abstraction, surrealism, subrealism, and mixed media (physical and digital), developing a contemplative allegory around primordial chaos and pre-representation. This approach shifts the purpose of the work from a simple aesthetic object to an intellectual and sensory process engaging the viewer in a cyclical conversation between their inner self and perception.
This piece not only revisits Van Gogh's figurative form, but proposes a prior suspension of the landscape, prior to any classical interpretation or presentation. It asserts that the work is "before the landscape," that is, before its tangible representation, evoking a subrealism that thus precedes realism, as an allegory of primal chaos, the invisible source and foundation of the visible. From this perspective, painting becomes a dynamic and non-fixed artifact, a device for activating aesthetic and intellectual awareness. The work is no longer limited to the finished object, but becomes a space for questioning, capturing the primary tensions of artistic creation.
The mixed media employed—merging acrylic paint on photographed canvas and digital painting animated frame by frame—accentuates this dynamic, blending physical materiality with the digital virtual. This hybridization illustrates the contemporaneity of artistic reception in a digital age where traditional media coexist with digital technologies, profoundly renewing the contemplative experience and the reading of the classics. The use of minimalist animation serves to prolong the ambiguity between stillness and movement, deepening the meditative dimension, open to a constantly active reinterpretation, where the imagined landscape overlaps with Van Gogh's legacy.
Philosophically, this work engages with major ideas in aesthetics and mysticism: the notion of an evolving, unstable reality, in perpetual negotiation between chaos and form, between the unconscious and visible representation. From this perspective, sub-reality, close to Surrealist and gestural Abstract Expressionist thought, becomes the site of an exploration where painting is a direct expression of primordial emotions, prior to the formation of a coherent world—a renewed "lyrical abstraction." This corresponds to a contemplative vision that invites active participation from the viewer, fostering an identification blended with intuition and reason, where art acts as a meditation on the very origin of meaning.
The "Xanthopsia" (yellow vision) collection, which contains this piece, plays with the idea of altered perception—a symbolic filter that translates the ambivalence between light and darkness, joy and suffering, hope and chaos. This positioning recalls the approach of Van Gogh, whose work often expresses the coexistence of opposing forces in nature and the human psyche. The revisited work thus places this duality at the heart of its reflection, summoning a utopian vision that finds a seed of positivity in darkness. Through this personal and imaginative overload, I engage in an open conversation on the very notion of landscape, inviting us to reinvent its form according to a contemporary and hybrid sensibility.
In summary, "Adding a Landscape" is at once an abstract and subrealist reinterpretation of Van Gogh, a tribute transposed through mixed physical and digital media, and a conceptual reflection on the very process of creation and aesthetic perception. It is a work at the intersection of philosophy, contemporary art, psychology, and mysticism, exploiting digitalization to enrich the contemplative experience and invite a new participatory reading, testifying to the capacity of art to transcend time and cultural forms.
Tribute to Van Gogh : « Lilac » (collection Hammer museum)
3840 x 2160 px / 4K MP4 / 185 Mo / 8 fps / 1/1 édition