CLÉMENT RODZIELSKI

Anime Series Unknown are paintings on hand-painted Japanese cartoon backgrounds from the 1980-1990s; the artist’s painting is then taking the spaces left blank, and originally allocated to characters. The second ensemble brings together paintings on magazines, diptychs in which the artist apposes his painting—produced eyes closed—next to a publicity on which a model poses, eyes shut. In both series of works, what is now visible is the inner life of the images.

‘In the display cases, the secret lier. The model comes first, inviting me to paint. Body at work but turned in on herself, she retreats simultaneously from the photography. She takes the helm, invents the eye’s method and manners, dictating my ways. In this obscurity, the hand guesses. The deposit of colours representing: little, an abstraction feigning indifference, the reverie of the model I am channeling, the caress of paper... The positions reverse and in the to-and-fro motion produced by this deposit: a portrait.

On the walls: the paintings have left the screens. Orphan, uninhabited backgrounds, abandoned by the entertainment industry. Skies and grounds, interior days, nights, monochromes... Autonomous, no longer stories, on which everything is being alive. My brush leaks. Updates, trembling, itching: one painting has landed on another. Traces inventing themselves, brushing lightly or pressing harder, are the animation I project before me. —C.R.