AN EXHIBITION BY HELEN JACQZ
MONDAPART GALLERY 92100 BOULOGNE
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2024
Marc Albert-Levin. When I see your recent paintings, Hélène, they remind me of the great American Action painters of the 1960s and 70s: Franz Kline, Paul Jenkins, Sam Francis, or even Jackson Pollock and Wilhelm de Kooning. The five years you spent in the United States seem to have had a great influence on your work…
Hélène Jacqz. What we have in common is vitality. But even if these formative years have played a decisive role in my painting, it cannot be considered now as mere « Action Painting ». My current work proceeds in successsive layers, a little like screen printing. Transparency, empty spaces and rhythm must combine ; and even if the application of the different « layers » is done with physical commitment and an intuitive conception of space, working in layers necessarily requires to take a certain distance, pauses and moments of reflexion. It requires also more mental preparation than my work a few years ago: I have first to visualize the space in my mind, determine in which direction my movement will go, what widths the spots will have, which values and patterns will be created by the layering of colors. I have first to imagine technical solutions, and then go for it!
Marc Albert-Levin. Before embarking on a real hand-to-hand combat with very large canvases and leaving on it the traces of some sort of a dance with colours performed with very large brushes, you say that you must first concentrate?
Hélène Jacqz. Yes. In the writings of Nichiren, a Buddhist monk who lived in thirteenth-century in Japan, there is a story that touched me deeply. It is that of a Chinese general nicknamed General Stone Tiger. He thinks he sees the tiger that devoured his mother and shoots an arrow at him with such intensity, such a strong desire to avenge her, that the arrow penetrates deep into a rock. that He had taken this rock for that tiger. When he understands his mistake, he tries to repeat this feat but never succeeds. It was the strength, the power of his conviction that allowed the arrow to sink into the stone. I never know in advance what will result from my projections, but I always try, when I paint, to involve my entire life in it, body and soul.
Marc Albert-Levin. Would it be right to say that, just like in dance, even if you twirl on the tip of your toe or if you fly away in a grand jeté, in painting, even if it is not figurative, there is a sense of balance that allows you to always land back on your feet?
Hélène Jacqz. Yes. On earth, you cannot escape the laws of gravity. In any physical construction, it must be taken into account. In classical painting, it is omnipresent. It is the golden ratio and all the rules of composition and perspective that it entails. Each civilization has chosen a particular vision, a way of representing things according to its belief system. But, in the end, painting (which is two-dimensional) has the particularity of freeing itself from these rules while playing with them. The space thus created says a lot about the era, the culture and the personality of the artist. For my part, the space, or the fragment of space that opens up in this window that is a painting, must be open on all sides, while finding its coherence within the frame. That’s why I like the constraint of the frame. It leads to use the inside of the square or rectangle in a thousand possible ways. That’s why I don’t try to free myself from the frame. Finding your freedom within this space is already quite a challenge.
Marc Albert-Levin. You are particularly fond of fluorescent colours, from orange to green and red?
Hélène Jacqz. Yes. In the past I used red or yellow cadmium for their great luminosity but when I discovered the even more extreme yellow, orange and neon red, I gladly included them in my palette.
Marc Albert-Levin. Hokusai was calling himself « the old man mad about painting ». Would you say that you are a « color freak »?
Hélène Jacqz. In a way, yes. Color connects people. It creates an immediacy, a vibration that is shared (even if no one perceives it in quite the same way). It’s a form of jubilation of the eye that helps me live. So why limit oneself with outdated rules of color or good taste? Like Brazilian music (Samba) made by the people and for the people, I would like to make a painting accessible to all. And color is, in my opinion, an important factor to achieve this.
Marc Albert-Levin. In this recent work, you also use latex to create reserves of white by using it as if it was a color?
Hélène Jacqz. Indeed, I buy latex by 20 liters and I use it without moderation! I love the traces latex imprints on the canvas once it has been removed. It is a technical headache to make it take new paths and its implementation is quite cumbersome. I invented all kinds of multi-hole canisters to tame its fluidity and orient its direction. I also use funny brushes, all dented (latex clogs all brushes after a while).These home made tools allow me to create the texture I am looking for, fluidity and rhythms. In this search for the tool most adapted to my intentions, there is a technical aspect that I find reassuring. It makes me forget « the vertigo of the blank canvas ».
Marc Albert-Levin. What I like about your paintings is that even though they are non-figurative, they manage to offer the same evidence as natural phenomena. They become as irrefutable as a hurricane, a cascade or a tidal wave. When we see them, we recognize them.
Hélène Jacqz. These are indeed images that remind me of nature – without my knowledge – because it is not intentional. The way I use the liquidity of colors and the tempo I associate with them, bring them closer to the movements of nature, such as water, wind, fire.
Marc Albert-Levin. The titles you give to your paintings confirm this:
« Celestial Inventory », « Outer-Space », « Underground », « Side Step », « Gem », « Source », « Counter-Current », « Inferno ». Or your titles allude to the seasons, winter, spring, summer or autumn. You also invented an interesting concept, that of « Allusive Geometry ». It could simply be called « Suggestive Stripes » isn’t it ?
Hélène Jacqz. You can call it as you wish. But I’d just like to make one point clear. For me, the most important thing is the determination. When it is strong enough, I always find technical solutions. The result depends on my inner clarity. I have to structure space in my mind before making it exist on the canvas. Thinking must be concise, concentrated but also flexible, in order to leave room for improvisation. It must remain open to numerous accidents, because it is what will give life to the painting. It is difficult to explain what I am looking for in this somewhat acrobatic process where part of the result comes from randomness. What ultimately interests me most is the indetermination of space, the interplay between the background and the surface and the resulting pictorial complexity it generates.
Interview by Marc Albert-Levin