Jean-Philippe Harvey - These Things Take Time
November 17 - December 24, 2011
Galerie Laroche/Joncas is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jean-Philippe Harvey. This will be his first solo exhibition with the gallery. Harvey is an an exciting young painter that explores and revises issues of abstraction and figuration in painting. The artist's work was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Galerie des Art Visuels, Université Laval in Québec City. His work was also featured in the group exhibition 'Compossibilité(s)' presented at the gallery in 2011.
'Those things we create'
Painting is a fiction that the artist continuously renews. Can an artist become many painters at once? Paintings start in the studio, with what the artist chooses to leave behind him. Sometimes they are simply impossible to finish. Shouldn’t it be better to venture through what is imagined forbidden?
The work of the painter confronts a body in motion. Canvases on the floor, on the walls, in a chaotic space accumulate. There is on the canvases gestures, doubts, paradoxes, noise of the painter fighting with himself, a desire to restart from the beginning, to transgress without fear, to be at one with the environment.
Figurative painting is another voice that originated from abstraction. The canvas can only contain what the gaze and memory trade each other. We necessarily finds erasures, lines, a few approximate drawings and why not, no clear delineation.
One night, I observed the works created by Jean-Philippe Harvey just like I listen to the songs from an album. That lasts about 40 minutes. Everything gets mixed up; minimal effects, omnipresent cracklings, textures barely audible, an incredible future ahead. His canvases contain space, a reflection, never stable, always ready to redefine themselves, codes difficult to make out, pornography perhaps, necessary time to decipher is needed.
'I’m not certain to want to say the truth' wrote Ariana Reines in ‘The cow’
‘’It is not easy to be honest because it is impossible to be complete’’. This work expresses truths often inadmissible even dubious at time, a call to an authentic self derision.
Certain works are more prosaic than other. Jean-Philippe Harvey makes references to pop star Morrissey, writer Lautréamont or painter Bonnard. Has Jean-Philippe Harvey read ‘Elle, par Bonheur et toujours nue’ by Guy Goffette ? ‘’Bonnard only had one flaw, to persist wanting becoming himself, to be only himself, but totally ; to say out loud what most don’t even dare think; that happiness exists, and love and beauty, that it isn’t a more or lesser priority, and that it is frankly good to search for nothing else. At the bottom of ourselves, way at the bottom.’’ How to capture in the other our own reflection.
I have not seen the exhibition; maybe I won’t even see it. A story exists behind this series of paintings. I am certain. I remember the acrylic and oil color spots, dozens of staples on the carpet of a congested and chaotic studio, some brushes, a roller and some green paint, where rests two large canvases that are upside down, as well as a radical practice standing at the right position. I imagine the artist dreaming of a black canvas more black that black.
David Cantin (October 2011)
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Exhibitions
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