Raphaël Prenovec
BackTOMATES DU JARDIN
GARDEN TOMATOES "You must cultivate your garden," said Voltaire in Candide. My garden is populated with fruits and vegetables born of my imagination, but above all, with colors. This is what I call my pictorial space, which I define as a space parallel to the physical space in which we move. Although the painter's pictorial space is filled with shapes and colors, it has nothing physical or material about it. The shapes and colors represented are inscribed in the space of the canvas and occupy1
GARDEN TOMATOES
"You must cultivate your garden," said Voltaire in Candide.
My garden is populated with fruits and vegetables born of my imagination, but above all, with colors. This is what I call my pictorial space, which I define as a space parallel to the physical space in which we move.
Although the painter's pictorial space is filled with shapes and colors, it has nothing physical or material about it. The shapes and colors represented are inscribed in the space of the canvas and occupy it in a certain way, and it is only insofar as they occupy it that they are representations of it. This is why fruit is not fruit, the tomato is not tomato, the apple is not apple, or as Magritte so aptly put it, "this is not a pipe" in one of his works. The object, the shape, and the color are all pretexts for occupying and expressing the pictorial space that the artist constructs and develops in his imagination. So do not look for a resemblance to reality, because pictorial representation is anything but real.
The Cubists, along with Braque, who brought this artistic movement to its peak, sought to make us understand that it was possible to see reality differently and to bring us into another dimension of life. Art possesses this power of suggestion, provided we are receptive and sensitive to its purpose.
In this series of five tomatoes, I invite the viewer to observe the ripening of this fruit in the unfolding of a kind of personal interiorization: this gaze implies not only a singular perception of reality, but it also engages the unfolding of an interior space that is organized in time and that is part of the duration. It is precisely this personal way of seeing that I wish to share with him and, more generally, I seek to approach through my work as a painter the mystery of the maturation of artistic production and that of becoming an artist as self-fulfillment.
"You must cultivate your garden," said Voltaire in Candide.
My garden is populated with fruits and vegetables born of my imagination, but above all, with colors. This is what I call my pictorial space, which I define as a space parallel to the physical space in which we move.
Although the painter's pictorial space is filled with shapes and colors, it has nothing physical or material about it. The shapes and colors represented are inscribed in the space of the canvas and occupy it in a certain way, and it is only insofar as they occupy it that they are representations of it. This is why fruit is not fruit, the tomato is not tomato, the apple is not apple, or as Magritte so aptly put it, "this is not a pipe" in one of his works. The object, the shape, and the color are all pretexts for occupying and expressing the pictorial space that the artist constructs and develops in his imagination. So do not look for a resemblance to reality, because pictorial representation is anything but real.
The Cubists, along with Braque, who brought this artistic movement to its peak, sought to make us understand that it was possible to see reality differently and to bring us into another dimension of life. Art possesses this power of suggestion, provided we are receptive and sensitive to its purpose.
In this series of five tomatoes, I invite the viewer to observe the ripening of this fruit in the unfolding of a kind of personal interiorization: this gaze implies not only a singular perception of reality, but it also engages the unfolding of an interior space that is organized in time and that is part of the duration. It is precisely this personal way of seeing that I wish to share with him and, more generally, I seek to approach through my work as a painter the mystery of the maturation of artistic production and that of becoming an artist as self-fulfillment.
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