The series of paintings I suggest for the Primitive Heritage exhibition endeavors to express what a man embodies beyond physical and social appearances – what he hides deep down within himself, what he sometimes does not have access to, what is buried deep in his personality, what makes him afraid as it makes him dream or fantasize. In another word, what does not appeal to the mind yet to the relationship between body and soul.
Indeed, it is quite common to represent another person in his or her physical or even psychological appearance, attempting to create a type of reality, even realism.
What is reality? Is it what our eyes show us, what our hands touch, our sense of smell detects, our mouth tastes and our ears hear? Or do we need all of the above and may be even more for us to perceive as present?
The past exists only in our memory and the future is the element of our imagination. Consequently, we exist only in the present. What's more, there is no unit of measure which is capable of defining the present. Therefore, each of us, each individual of us, is capable of perceiving its present. Your present is not my present, even if we experience the same play at the same time. Reality is just an illusion: it's about someone's image reflected to others.
Thus, what we perceive, what we live through is very personal.
What I wanted to share with people in this exhibition is a purely fictitious and subjective form of introspection - especially mine - in all its diversity, since no one can escape from his or her own circumstances.
Primitive Heritage can be the expression of a variety of sensitive, intuitive, visceral and real self-portraits which take the form of anyone, no matter their gender, materializing the true direction of life: the road from one to the other, from the individual towards otherness, and vice versa.
-- Gaël Davrinche
