Abstract painting has always left me doubtful and yet the exhibition entitled “Espace Silence” in June 2018 by the painter Zao-wou-ki at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris did not leave me indifferent and inspired me. Following reflections: “Painting without a subject, space is silent.

• I would say transcendental meditation, aspiration to cut ties with the outside world and the very space of the canvas to reconnect with the self, listen to your interior music, where in this interior space, there is no longer any projection or identification with the visible world !!!

Curiously, the spirit escapes, disperses in the painting to cling to a surge of the brush, a line, a shape, recalling the visible world precisely to silence the silence …!

So reassuring tendency to want to organize space, understand it, rationalize it, reduce it to our benchmarks, our understanding! “Hey, it looks like a swallow” exclaims a lady in front of me in front of a shapeless form! Yes, abstract painting plunges us into a kind of vision of nowhere without spatial or temporal reference, without reference mark, just a call to silence any prejudice, any understanding, any habit, acquired or knowledge.

In short, letting go to travel in an interior or subliminal world as distressing as the unconscious, as peaceful as the desert, the sky or the water …. Eden or nothingness …? And yet the painter himself comes from a very tangible reality by inviting us to the world of the invisible in a conscious or unconscious gesture although controlled, despite himself transcribes a rhythm, colors, flatness or relief, calm or complex …

To wonder if at the origin of all essence, life is not disorder or chance, life is part of a direction, a meaning !!

Also, this invitation in the abstract is not an observation of nonsense but rather an incentive to understand the mechanism of our perception, our unconscious and innate tendency which pushes us to rationalize, to cling to known landmarks and understandable !!!

The space – silence is distressing or serene depending on what our tormented soul or not is ready to register …

We are finally invited to rewrite the space ourselves – silence, to make it our own, reflection of our being or inner resonance. !!

Jocelyne Gannage