The plastic snacks of Patrick Chappert-Gaujal.
Faithful to a childhood and to his games, at the place where the waves
caress the beaches
like the rustle of the nuptial linens. One finds not
only violets and roses, its in this precious
deposit that Patrick
Chappert-Gaujal fishes and finds his plastic snacks. Here on the moving
lips of MARE NOSTRUM (the “domestic lake” of the poet Salah Stetié) and
on the fringes of
the VIA DOMITIA, a cemetary garden of objects and
signs. Beach of adventures, where
the artist seeks his materials :
vegetable, mineral, cultural.
The stroll (step by step),
the hunting and gathering (like that of an
archelologist), this is the first work of Patrick,
who we know is
intoxicated with surprises and “je ne sais quoi” and “presque rien”
(so dear to the philosopher Jankelevitch) who calls together his eye
and his revery.
Humble,
pathetic yet fascinating traces, trophies borrowed from
ephemeral and scattered writing of time,
of movement from day and
night, of the meteorological waltz, more or less furious.
The second part of Patrick’s work is his workshop. But let us be clear
about it - not just any
workshop. In his - vast, all the skylights open to
the pond and the sea - lived the writer-pirate
Henry de Monfreid, son of
painter Georges-Daniel and, at certain times of the evening or
morning
you can run into the ghosts of some of the giants that stopped there
(Gaugin, Matisse, Picasso)
or set up their easel not far away
(Hartung). It’s here, sheltered from the heat - which intimidates
and
makes one aware of his responsiblities at the same time - that
Chappert-Gaujal became
a painter and a sculptor. It’s here, ruled more
by the paradigm of collecting than READY-MADE,
that he makes, with his
own hands and the eye of a magus, images from the chosen ruins.
But the work of art exists only after passing a third test, the color
test. The artist is not satisfied
with only the material of the ruin
(vegetable, mineral, textile, industrial) put together.
He dresses up,
gives body and a festive appearance, he gives back a sort of clear
voice
that abandonment, lack of use or scorn had made mute, to
everything that the work table
(lay out, superimposing, gluing)
reinterprets, with the need to breathe and the necessity of
a beating
meaning.
With the primary material gleaned and accumulated (which for a time
“rests”
on the shelves of his workshop) P. Chappert-Gaujal elaborates
paintings in relief of volumes-steles
which not only talk to us
(between memory and fiction) of the spirit of a particular place,
but
of all the places and the spells, intermingled that the artist carries
around in his suitcase
of great voyager, from Sweden to South Africa,
Asia, and America. Lover of his Occitan confines,
he has wings that
take him everywhere. That is why his playful and ingenious art opens us
a pathway to wonder and dreams.
Jacques Queralt. august 1996
