Fabien Verschaere, La salle d'attente, 2001
Gouaches on wood
350 X 150 cm
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Born in 1975, the young French artist Fabien Verschaere has been invited to partipate in numerous group exhibitions throughout Europe. Among these were Academia per L'Europa at the Castello di Rivoli, in Turin, and Traversées (curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist) at the Musée d'art moderne in Paris.
Fabien Verschaere is represented by Galerie Michel Rein in Paris. |
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Artistic Approach
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Fabien Verschaere, Mickey Cible, 2002
Watercolor on paper
42 X 29,7 cm
Fabien Verschaere, Genetic diaspora, 2002
Wood, cactus, gouache and felter pen
Fabien Verschaere, Genetic diaspora, 2002
Wood, cactus, gouache and felter pen
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"Verschaere constructs painting from its own margins. Since the beginning, he used unconventional support and media for "serious artist": watercolour, figurative and colourful, amateur photography as remnants of his self-taught performances, or his ironical and basic installation. At the same time, he knows where he goes, his work shows a stunning assurance and power.
Even if very young work, Verschaere knows where he goes. He sets himself at the margin to aim for the heart. Let's see for example the watercolours, this media is often depreciated in contemporary art and doesn't fit within the pictorial consensus of the past years. Nor narrative or abstract or literary, his figurative watercolours bring together enigmatic and banal motif. Of weird and strong saturated colours, those watercolours on paper are characterized by a kind of non-space, with flat figures drifting on the paper surface, like stickers on a wall. Even so, these watercolours have a strange and strong presence opposed to the support fragility. This presence is caused first by a new way of working with colour that characterized Verschaere's work. The colours are over saturated by the pigments intensity and by the paper's light on the other side. As the intensity of light increases they tend to look even more artificial. These paradoxes create an enigmatic poetry and the work creates a strong asserted identity into space.
But the strong presence of those watercolours has another reason to bring us to the centre of Verschaere's work. The watercolour's motif and the space apparatus surrounding them show an obsession over saturated of strong drives of what Deleuze and Guattari call desire. We can think of Christian Boltanski for the obsessional paradigm of this work. But even then, Verschaere don't use memory to talk about his obsessions. He creates "private signs" in the sense of "private language"(privatsprache) developed by Wittgenstein. Showing that his obsessions go through form instead of a contents art, literary or narrative. This faculty to give desire a form allow this work his full potential. Verschaere, with his wild energy, is one of the most talented of the young art generation in France."
(Robert Fleck)
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Fabien Verschaere on the Web
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