Description
“I had to walk that path to the beach that day, at that moment. To walk and watch the water ebb and flow, hypnotically, like a current that cleansed me from within and, the next second, gave me a feeling of clarity, as if everything had been written in every grain of sand from the beginning.
You just had to let yourself be carried along, grasp the meaning of the moment, a crucial second where the smallest detail takes on disproportionate dimensions, a source of meaning, a raw, unvarnished truth. A free nature, with clear air, visible to infinity, or at least to the horizon—the very one that defines itself with determinism as an unwavering goal.
Turning around and looking through that clear vision, there was also a people: those of the in-between, undefined, like me, more or less. It remains to be determined whether one is here or elsewhere.” Well, no, precisely, we don't want to be defined, nor to be from here or elsewhere, just to be in between. Those who reject the meaning of labels, those who prefer to cut them out or turn them upside down, just for the pleasure of proving that it's possible and that we can live very well like that—and even very well, in fact.
It has the taste of freedom, it seems easy and frightening at the same time, the double meaning of things. And it's only superficial, because everything is so much simpler and clearer if we dwell on the details, just a little, without insisting, because there too we would lose the meaning: the meaning of grains of sand. The immutable and defined meaning of a dialectic of appearances has nothing to do with it. It is the enlightened sense of heredity that knows the way to the beach, for it has seen it written in every grain of sand, and it was breathtaking, enough to drive mad those who would have lost themselves in doubt.
Let us waste no more time and savor this moment…
Curatorial Analysis and Conceptualization
The work “I Had to Take This Path to the Beach” does not simply revisit art history; it offers a subrealist reinterpretation. Where Surrealism seeks above reality, this approach delves beneath, into the underlying strata of creation. Taking Vincent Van Gogh’s “Beach at Scheveningen” as its anchor, the artist uses the palimpsest technique: scraping the surface of history to inscribe a new dialogue. It is an emotional stratigraphy where acrylic paint (matter) and digital animation (flow) coexist.
The Allegory of the In-Between: A Philosophy of Resistance
At the heart of this approach lies the philosophical notion of the "in-between." As the poetic prose evokes, it is about representing this "undefined people" who reject binary labels (here/elsewhere, physical/digital).
The artwork itself embodies this resistance:
It is neither purely painting, frozen in its material determinism.
It is neither purely video, immaterial and elusive.
It is hybrid. It inhabits this liminal space where freedom consists of "turning labels upside down." It is a celebration of indeterminacy as the only possible truth in the face of the world's complexity.
Xanthopsia and the Yellow Vision: From Storm to Clarity
The Xanthopsia collection takes its name from this visual alteration that tints perception yellow, often associated with Van Gogh. Here, it is reinterpreted not as a pathology, but as optical resilience.
While Van Gogh's original canvas was painted in a storm (real grains of sand remained stuck to it), this digital reinterpretation brings the "sensation of clarity" evoked in the text. The yellow vision becomes the filter of radical optimism, the mind's capacity to transmute the "gray" of existence (doubt, the storm) into light ("savoring this moment").
The Technical Device: A Cyclical Conversation
The minimalist stop-motion animation acts as the metronome for this contemplation. It does not seek the spectacular, but the hypnotic. It reproduces the movement of "water flowing back and forth," creating a temporal loop that negates the linearity of time.
The Grain of Sand as Pixel: The text mentions that everything is written in the "grain of sand." In the work, the grain of acrylic pigment merges with the digital pixel. The macrocosm (the horizon) merges with the microcosm (the detail), inviting the viewer to an attentive, unobtrusive presence.
Conclusion: This piece shifts the focus from the finished object to the intellectual and sensory process. It transforms the viewer into a wanderer on this timeless beach. By blending gestural expressionism and digital culture, the work demonstrates that modernity does not erase the past, but illuminates it. It is an invitation to join this "in-between people," to walk on the shifting sands of certainty in order to finally find clarity.
Tribute to Vincent van Gogh: Beach at Scheveningen
collection: The Baltimore Museum of Art
(The Cone collection was created by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland.)
3840 x 2160 px / 4K MP4 / 189 MB / 8 fps / 1/1 edition