|
Rejected by the sea
"It is thanks to memory, for example, that the sense of identity does not dissolve during sleep." Michel Houellebecq, “The possibility of an island” It took three light years to Olivier Dubois-Cherrier to finish this series of twenty-one canvases and some 16 works on paper collected under the title “Rejected by the sea”. It was in Barcelona, a city of art and history, that the impulse to paint seized him in 2005 He first trained in experimental engraving in a workshop led by the artist Nuria Duran, then in acrylic painting at the DaVinci Escola d’art in the Catalan city. Led by a change of course in his life and an important acquaintance, he decided to return to live in the Caribbean, where part of his roots lied, and settled down in Santo Domingo with the firm intention of becoming a professional painter. |
All the elements that would unleash this frenzy of creativity that haunted him since childhood were then brought together.
In an effort to awaken the mind through image, light, and color, Olivier Dubois-Cherrier literally dived into painting and engaged in this series of canvases that takes us into a sort of mental slideshow “about the sea”. Beyond the obvious symbolism linked to the figure of the mother, the title of the work “Rejected by the sea*”, refers to everything pertaining the relationship between man and his environment. Constantly looking for new shapes, singular experiences with the substance, not to say with materials, he incorporated a certain number of found elements to his acrylic palette: sand, nylon bags, ropes, bottles and plastic caps, shells and seaweed. The mixed media offered a great deal of aesthetic freedom allowing the artist to revisit all stages of life, from childhood and the loss of innocence to the cruel reality of a world of fools.
A genuine Ode to the ocean, its movements and to the element indexed as H²O, water, vital to mankind, this painting of particles formulates the argument of the artist about this acre of rediscovered paradise which is an island heavily exposed to natural and human disasters. In works such as Venus and Lost Vibrations and even in Distances, Olivier D takes us into a deep study of the sea urchin, this marine invertebrate almost as round as the Earth, present on the globe since the dawn of time, and turned here into a skeleton deprived of its prickles.
In a style close to that of Matisse, upon a blue or bright yellow background, the sea urchin fills the space of the canvas with a rotational movement, like a spinning dervish who embodies a general meditation on the whirlwinds of life and love and the passage of time. The first chapter of this series ends naturally in works like Emancipation, through which Olivier D delves deeper into abstraction, where the tragic ending of the fragile urchin marks the passage from the carelessness of youth to the responsibilities of becoming an adult.
With The fair promise, the artist seemed to have reached a kind of pictorial language that matched his original ambition. He likes to say he paints the boundaries, the limits, as he paints the scope of his canvases. The grains of the canvas are confounded with the grains of sand added to the acrylic paint and the flow of tainted water spilled onto the canvas. The extent of the color depends on the inclination given to the canvas placed on the ground, as if to better explain the erosion of the world.
Rejected by the sea was also an experience that pushed the artist "beyond himself”, beyond the tides of life, the attractions of the moon and the sun. Water, fire, earth, air, the four classical and mythical elements are at the heart of his series of paintings. All senses awaken and developing the maturity of his subject, Olivier D showed us a world where the man who becomes an adult participates fully in the system that generates the destruction of his environment. At his stage he started painting cans discarded by the sea. He pushed his protest to the point of inserting the cans themselves, gathered from the beaches that feed his inspiration in works such as Welcome to Art-Land, Vile Can or Dark night, obscure tomorrow.
Everything is implemented to find harmony on the canvas, even if it often deals with serious subjects. The composition and staging of each table are so many other memories, life stories that highlight first of all the fragile coexistence of man and his environment. Olivier D demonstrates through his unique painting that nothing and no one is invulnerable or invincible, not even the hero of the Trojan War, Ajax the Great, as suggested by Perspectives for the future, with its packaging of a homonym household product rejected by the sea.
This group of contemporary and minimalist still-lifes, composed by layers of color and sand, impasto and other overlays configure the memory of a genesis, that of a painting which affirms and frees itself from his predecessors, Nicolas de Staël or Miquel Barceló.
Painting for the sake of telling, of seeing without “Leaving the World”, alluding to the title of the last work of this artist’s opus. Miquel Barceló, an artist born on the Spanish island of Mallorca and particularly admired by Olivier D, defined very precisely what it is all about: "Painting is like watching things on the bottom of the sea. They are initially invisible and then, by sheer force of attention, they gradually appear”.
Nathalie Hainaut
Art critic
April 2011
* “Rejected by the sea” (“Rejeté par la mer”) and “Rejected by the mother” (“Rejeté par la mère”) are pronounced exactly the same in french.
In an effort to awaken the mind through image, light, and color, Olivier Dubois-Cherrier literally dived into painting and engaged in this series of canvases that takes us into a sort of mental slideshow “about the sea”. Beyond the obvious symbolism linked to the figure of the mother, the title of the work “Rejected by the sea*”, refers to everything pertaining the relationship between man and his environment. Constantly looking for new shapes, singular experiences with the substance, not to say with materials, he incorporated a certain number of found elements to his acrylic palette: sand, nylon bags, ropes, bottles and plastic caps, shells and seaweed. The mixed media offered a great deal of aesthetic freedom allowing the artist to revisit all stages of life, from childhood and the loss of innocence to the cruel reality of a world of fools.
A genuine Ode to the ocean, its movements and to the element indexed as H²O, water, vital to mankind, this painting of particles formulates the argument of the artist about this acre of rediscovered paradise which is an island heavily exposed to natural and human disasters. In works such as Venus and Lost Vibrations and even in Distances, Olivier D takes us into a deep study of the sea urchin, this marine invertebrate almost as round as the Earth, present on the globe since the dawn of time, and turned here into a skeleton deprived of its prickles.
In a style close to that of Matisse, upon a blue or bright yellow background, the sea urchin fills the space of the canvas with a rotational movement, like a spinning dervish who embodies a general meditation on the whirlwinds of life and love and the passage of time. The first chapter of this series ends naturally in works like Emancipation, through which Olivier D delves deeper into abstraction, where the tragic ending of the fragile urchin marks the passage from the carelessness of youth to the responsibilities of becoming an adult.
With The fair promise, the artist seemed to have reached a kind of pictorial language that matched his original ambition. He likes to say he paints the boundaries, the limits, as he paints the scope of his canvases. The grains of the canvas are confounded with the grains of sand added to the acrylic paint and the flow of tainted water spilled onto the canvas. The extent of the color depends on the inclination given to the canvas placed on the ground, as if to better explain the erosion of the world.
Rejected by the sea was also an experience that pushed the artist "beyond himself”, beyond the tides of life, the attractions of the moon and the sun. Water, fire, earth, air, the four classical and mythical elements are at the heart of his series of paintings. All senses awaken and developing the maturity of his subject, Olivier D showed us a world where the man who becomes an adult participates fully in the system that generates the destruction of his environment. At his stage he started painting cans discarded by the sea. He pushed his protest to the point of inserting the cans themselves, gathered from the beaches that feed his inspiration in works such as Welcome to Art-Land, Vile Can or Dark night, obscure tomorrow.
Everything is implemented to find harmony on the canvas, even if it often deals with serious subjects. The composition and staging of each table are so many other memories, life stories that highlight first of all the fragile coexistence of man and his environment. Olivier D demonstrates through his unique painting that nothing and no one is invulnerable or invincible, not even the hero of the Trojan War, Ajax the Great, as suggested by Perspectives for the future, with its packaging of a homonym household product rejected by the sea.
This group of contemporary and minimalist still-lifes, composed by layers of color and sand, impasto and other overlays configure the memory of a genesis, that of a painting which affirms and frees itself from his predecessors, Nicolas de Staël or Miquel Barceló.
Painting for the sake of telling, of seeing without “Leaving the World”, alluding to the title of the last work of this artist’s opus. Miquel Barceló, an artist born on the Spanish island of Mallorca and particularly admired by Olivier D, defined very precisely what it is all about: "Painting is like watching things on the bottom of the sea. They are initially invisible and then, by sheer force of attention, they gradually appear”.
Nathalie Hainaut
Art critic
April 2011
* “Rejected by the sea” (“Rejeté par la mer”) and “Rejected by the mother” (“Rejeté par la mère”) are pronounced exactly the same in french.