pierre-Yves Le Duc
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"Much the same as a piece of fruit, the content [of my artwork] is always wrapped in a protective covering. The fruit may be either the apple of sin or a banana." | Pierre-Yves Le Duc
Pierre-Yves Le Duc was born in France in 1964. His Italian descent led him to attend Italian courses at the Arts Faculty of the Sorbonne, where he graduated in 1988. Already fascinated by the city of Naples during his previous journeys there, he decided that this was to be the place where he wished to establish himself.
His first works date back to 1989 but it was only in 1992, after meeting the 85-year-old Alfredo Bovio di Giovanni, that he made his decision to devote himself entirely to art. Their friendship remained close until 1995, when Alfredo passed away. However, this major encounter left Pierre-Yves with the profound sense of one’s own individuality, which for him could only be found through the spiritual artistic search.
Sacred Portal, Pierre-Yves le Duc’s signature body of work, is unlike his previous works. There, the erotic symbol existed in stark contrast to its background. Instead, this work employs a linen veil and a thorough preparation of the basic white color to give a milky appearance to the surface of the canvases. As Genet used to write when referring to Giacometti’s sketches, lines seem to exist only to suggest form and thickness to the white hues… What is full is not the line, but the color. What was absent and invisible is now manifest, with the duality of movement between contraction-expansion, sky-earth, spirit-matter.
What le Duc portrays is not a woman per se but the female principle that dwells in all of us; that facet of our nature that tends to take root in the biological realm and to become instinct. In the initiation ritual of the Mahavrata, an ascetic copulates with a prostitute who embodies his own image of the feminine in the daemonic aspect. Precisely in the same fashion, the artist faces the carnality of the object painted and its dual nature, where risk and viability coexist. The receptiveness the female sexual organ symbolizes seems to have no limit in the man of the third millennium. Endlessly wishing to gratify his instincts more than to meet his real needs, he is risking his own spiritual death, the dissolution in the liquid voluptuousness of contemporary imagination.
artist statement
The first series follows the intimate theme of the representation of the erotic self. Its means of expression issue from the deliberate borrowing of the symbolic language traditionally used to depict the Sacred and the vision of God (like for instance the veil, the absolute white light and the absence of matter as a detachment from material values). This symbolic language is partly borrowed from eroticism as well. This first theme characterizes the group of white canvases displaying erotic male and female forms, two white skulls, plus three white canvases belonging to the “Angels” series.
The task of white canvases is to convey an extreme frailty, and this is their strength. But these canvases are somewhat like a plant of rush, which can be bent, but never breaks. Using a linen veil to cover an acrylic painting made on an unfinished cotton canvas is a technique that turns these paintings into something that practically lasts forever. The erotic theme finds its completion in 30 oil paintings on paper and 22 oil paintings on paper that represent the anatomical details of intercourse.
The second theme, that of the Flood and of the natural catastrophe of tsunamis, is a series of large waves, 12 steel-framed works in ink on paper. The two series play ironically and implicitly on the subjects of "crime and punishment". The violence of the “punishment” finds its echo in the very strong visual impact of the image of the tsunami, while the “sin” is paradoxically expressed through an erotic representation that uses the language of purity and sacredness.
The first series thus refers to the traditional theme of the self-portrait in which the artist represents himself. In my case, however, I did so not only by painting the anatomical details of both sexes, but also by using the mystical language that is the underlying theme of my search. This is a self-portrait in two respects. The first is the one of the profoundly intimate dimension of my erotic self. The second is the one I project outside of myself, my catastrophic vision of the world and of our constantly precarious and fragile existence - always at the mercy of events that are independent from our will and rule us.
Much the same as a piece of fruit, the content is always wrapped in a protective covering. The fruit may be either the apple of sin or a banana (2011).
artist bio
BORN | 1964 Born in Savoy, France
EDUCATION
1989
Maîtrise (four-year University Degree) in Italian Language and Literature
Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2012
Sacred Portal, Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2011
Art Hotel Mezzatorre, Ischia, Italy
Reggia di Portici, Portici, Italy
2002
Studio 34 Gallery, Salerno, Italy
1999
Dina Carola Gallery, Naples, Italy
Institut Français de Naples “Grenoble”, Naples, Italy
1997
Institute of Higher Studies for Planning, Naples, Italy
1995
Art Now Gallery, curated by Massimo Sgroi, Capua, Italy
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2011
Erotoritratti, Kaplan’s Project Gallery, Naples, Italy
Art Hotel Gran Paradiso, Sorrento, Italy
2010
Gallery Collection, 41artecontemporanea Gallery, Turin, Italy
Rosarno, Desperate House-lives, Kaplan's project Gallery, Naples, Italy
Cleanse yourself, please!, PAN (Palace of the Arts of Naples), Naples, Italy
2009
motion painting project, Philomarino Contemporary Art Gallery, Naples, Italy
2008
Roma Art Fair, Overfoto Gallery, Rome, Italy
osso-buco, video installation, Kaplan’s Projections Gallery, Naples, Italy
la chute ou la lutte, Kaplan’s Projections Gallery, Naples, Italy
Soap opera, curated by James Putnam, 41 artecontemporanea Gallery, Turin, Italy
2007
Segni, “A Journey through Contemporary Drawing”, curated by Mimmo di Marzio, San Lorenzo Gallery, Milan, Italy
body, Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Casoria (Naples), Italy
2006
41 artecontemporanea Gallery, Turin, Italy
gu, “Latium between the Mediterranean and Europe” International Show, Colonna Castle, Gennazzano (Rome), Italy
2005
Miami Art Fair, Changing Role Gallery, Miami, FL
artissima, Changing Role Gallery, Turin, Italy
2004
soap opera, Changing Role Gallery, Naples, Italy
gu, curated by James Putnam, Meridian Room (National Archeological Museum), Naples, Italy
2001
“Pavia – Giovane Arte Europea”, First International Contest of Contemporary Art, Visconti Castle (Pavia), Italy
1998
medium, Sala lazzaretto, Naples, Italy
1996
i quaranta ladroni, Greek-Roman aqueduct of Naples Underground, Naples, Italy
inedito open, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Latina, Italy
Basilea Art Fair, Trisorio Studio Gallery, Basel, Switzerland
1995
le nove muse e i nove poeti, Piazza Plebiscito, Naples, Italy
le nove muse e i nove poeti, Villa Gallotti, Naples, Italy
1994
cenacolo, Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, Naples, Italy
essays
COSMIC WHORE
by Mimmo Ambrosino
We are constantly cloaked in passive imagination. The flow of images in our society is so pervasive that, in order to make room for ever-changing sensory appeals, it annihilates even our nearest remembrances. It is as if perceptively we regressed to an oral phase feeding ourselves, like Freud’s polymorphous perversity, by incessantly sucking images in a continuous and superficial eroticization of the senses. We are prey to a passional passivity, to a duality which is the nature itself of Eros. Although he feeds on a never-ending desire Eros never manages to possess reality, much the same as when the desire for an earthly possession brings an evil with itself (Plotinus).
However, Plato identified two forms of this “mania” (divine inspiration), one high and one low, the former springing from a human disease, the latter from a divine exaltation. Likewise, within imagination we can distinguish a passive and an active form. The one seeks for the illusion of immortality by perpetually generating external images. The other has the power to create forms by drawing from the archetypal images engraved in the depths of our being.
Eros can take the form of an animal instinct or of a pure instinct, or it may be transcendent. Its power can either affirm or transform itself. Even the drive, sublimated, acquires a potential metaphysical value. The end is to transcend the human condition in a real regeneration, in a change of the ontological status (Evola).
In precisely the same manner the overgrowth of images, distancing itself from the essentiality of symbols, produces the image-idol. In its being finite and self-referential this idol only asks to be adored, in the form of the golden calf or of a shark in formaldehyde. On the contrary, when symbols are not mere material for the senses but become the component of spirit, they attain their purpose, signify something else, and disclose a higher reality. It is the power of the image-icon that demands instead to be venerated. This is so because, as Pavel Florenskij writes, the purpose of an icon is to raise conscience to the spiritual world and to show the mysterious and supernatural. Through an icon the invisible is made apparent, the visible transfigured. In us the veil of the visible is momentarily torn and through it… the invisible blows a breath that does not belong to this world… The icon is the regal door that allows communication between these worlds.
Access to imagination as a truly creative faculty is not given to pure inspiration…The artist who under the pretext of art offers to us whatever emerges in him when he is possessed by his inspiration errs, and induces others to err… What we need is his arcane dreams… What we need is that which imagination returns, once we venture out on the threshold between the sensible and the supersensible world.
This is a path scattered with seductive traps. We are halfway between the time-space dimension and the angels’ world. At the verge of this world is the ultimate deception and seduction… Blinding images originate from passion. Yet, the danger resides not in passion but in the value attributed to it, in how it is exchanged for something that is the direct opposite of what it actually is… We need to keep in check our soul. Only this can avoid that, being beguiled by pleasure, it may take a course that gratifies it but alienates it from true knowledge. This is what orthodox ascetics name prelest.
Prelest is the spiritual mistake, one of the most awful conditions into which man can fall. In this middle ground what we need to do is fight because, as André Breton wrote, “L’imagination n'est pas don, mais par excellence objet de conquête”.
With their imagination some artists re-elaborate, at times with amazing results, those contents of their conscience that they derive from reality. Others instead investigate, not without suffering, upon the archetypal origin of these contents, only apparently distancing themselves from reality.
Pierre-Yves le Duc’s work moves precisely in this direction. His early passion with color painting did not take long to wear out. With the Cenacolo installation of 1994 it was as if he had set a new beginning point, as if an archetype had been revealed to him. The recurring theme was that of a black upturned vagina. It featured, with only minimal variations, thirteen canvases displayed around a circular monument in a square of Naples. The triangular image of a pubis, which was not immediately perceivable, was reminiscent of an erupting volcano, or of a angel that is soaring in the struggle to escape from base matter.
Whatever fire triggered this process was an inner, perhaps unconscious secret of the artist. Like an alchemist, however, le Duc used the immutable matter represented by the sexual symbol and its power of attraction to concentrate volatile influences on himself, and to turn the psychic libido into a creative and cognitive libido.
As in an alchemical Nigredo, le Duc embarked on a journey to his inner knowledge. He decided to enter into the area where death is lit by the moon in order that he may subsequently experience rebirth, for he who wants to enter into God’s kingdom has to enter first into the body of his mother, and to die there (Paracelsus). This is the dwelling place of the bright lunar goddess, whose other side however is the black goddess of the abyss, the Mater Tenebrarum. We are in the very place where the lowest emotions of the higher world come in contact with the highest emotions of the lower world. We are before a double door that may lead into the dominion of life – or into that of death.
This regressus ad uterum (regress to the uterus) le Duc ritualizes even in his daily work routine, withdrawing to his atelier in the underground – the womb of Naples. This is a regress that can also be identified in the painstaking execution of his canvases. The multiples of Pierre-Yves le Duc return to the prototype, their reproduction in several exemplars almost simulating an industrial technique. They are however the result of an exact work in which the lines – repeated, yet always different – absorb their author, who nothing else asks but to slowly dissolve in them. It is a labor that one finds it difficult to perceive instantly. This is because le Duc deliberately obliterates any memory of the execution, almost as if he were endeavoring to remove the traces of a crime.
Cosmic Whore, Pierre-Yves le Duc’s latest installation, is very much unlike his previous works. There, the erotic symbol contrasted remarkably with the background. Here instead a linen veil and a thorough preparation of the basic white color give a milky appearance to the surface of the canvases. As Genet used to write when referring to Giacometti’s sketches, lines seem to exist only to give form and thickness to the white hues… What is full is not the line, but the white color. What was absent and invisible is now manifest and sends back incessantly to the visible, with a double movement of contraction-expansion, sky-earth, spirit-matter.
The twenty-four large canvases hung in the void shape the space and follow one another, their lines only apparently repeated, the room being bathed in a faint light. Activated at random by the visitors’ passage within the rays of six photocells, dazzling lights strike in sequence each canvas for a twenty-fourth of a second. The motion is sudden and yet nothing moves, currens sine cursu et movens sine motu. The white light is like that of the Albedo. It is the spark that originates from the blazing core of the earth that is the abode of Archeus, the servant of nature, whom Paracelsus also named Vulcano. This is where the coniunctio occurs, where the masculine and the feminine join, where the hermaphrodite takes a spiritual form: the androgynous soars to the height of its spiritual development, where the conscious and the unconscious are one single thing.
The powerful flashes of the projectors catch the viewer unawares. Moved as if haphazardly, the human element transmits that impulse which sparks off the light sources in a rapid sequence. It is as if the light particles imprisoned by the dark matter were freed, like sparks that glow in the black arcane substance, that tear momentarily the veil of illusion. This powerful, one-instant long vision is so fast that the visitor has to quickly seize upon the the trembling white light, and has to be watchful. Our thin body undergoes an alteration, a breach in its normal state of consciousness. And yet we need a constant, daily effort to develop our self-determination as human beings.
What le Duc portrays is not a woman per se but the female principle that dwells in all of us, that facet of our nature that tends to take root in the biological realm and to become instinct. In the initiation ritual of the Mahavrata an ascetic copulates with a prostitute who embodies his own image of the feminine in the daemonic aspect. Precisely in the same fashion, the artist faces the carnality of the object painted and its dual nature, where risk and viability coexist. The receptiveness the female sexual organ symbolizes seems to have no limit in the man of the third millennium. Endlessly wishing to gratify his instincts more than to meet his real needs, he is risking his own spiritual death, the dissolution in the liquid voluptuousness of contemporary imagination.
November 2010
SACRED PORTAL
by Honora Foah
The life of all that we behold
Depends upon that mystery.
Vain is the glory of the sky,
The beauty vain of field and grove
Unless, while with admiring eye
We gaze, we also learn to love.
--William Wordsworth
Almost 2 years ago, my husband Dahlan and I went to the studio of Pierre-Yves Le Duc in Naples, Italy as a courtesy to see a friend of a friend and ended up staying most of the day, mesmerized by the work.
They look like angels, birds, bodies being crucified. They look like yoni. They are white on white, they are black on white, white on black. They look like the explosion of Vesuvius, they are phalluses from heaven entering the volcano, and there are holy brains as well.
In Pierre-Yves studio, what struck me, besides the sheer beauty of the work, was how the figures, how the things he painted and drew felt so accurate. That is, they corresponded to how my body feels—not what I see, but what I feel kinesthetically.
The process by which Pierre-Yves creates the paintings is laborious, exacting work. From the initial calligraphic gesture drawing, he paints a negative many times larger, which preserves both the spontaneous line and gives weight and importance to the negative space, which in this case is usually the main corpus—literally—as the white space is usually the body. “The white gives the invisible a certain amount of tangibility,” he says. It gives the negative space weight, especially in the paintings where the line itself is then left as raw linen canvas. For Pierre-Yves, this is his way of emphasizing the body as light.
If the answer is infinite light Why do we sleep in the dark? --Paul Simon
Even as babies, we are mesmerized by the light, by movement of light. Many of us retain this fascination all of our lives. Le Duc is one. I asked him about his childhood because I wondered how he came by the ability to feel his own body and translate to something visual. The whole aspect of being a human being who can inhabit one’s own skin seems to be leaking from human capacity as apparently our Western children spend almost no time whatsoever in nature.
In fact, Le Duc did spend a lot of time in the woods by himself, or drawing by himself because he was a lonely child who did not find it easy to fit with other people. Here now with this work, there is the rowing toward humanity, rowing toward love, that perhaps in the beginning was not so readily given.
Le Duc as a person drawn to light, has made work which resonates with many aspects of the world from the sexual to the cosmic because one is drawn through his admiring eye by his desire to learn to love. This desire is somehow visible on the canvas and it pulls us through the portal of the image. The loving does the work—for him as an artist sweating it out 10 hours a day, and for us, for whom he has made a trail by the heat of his own desire.
So why isn’t Le Duc’s work pornography? Because everything about it, not the least of which is the sheer effort and tedious amount of work it takes to make it, speaks to the desire to be with the foundational forces of life. Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet, says that he had to leave the church because it refused to deal with sex. These are where my real questions are! he says. If you do not help me in this beginning question, if the waters of my life are muddied here at the font, how can anything else ever come right?
Le Duc looks right into the portal of life and keeps looking until the dimensions of sex, birth and creation begin to be illuminated. It is not that everything can be reduced to sex, it is that sex is a reduction of the entire structure of nature and the soul. “Reality is a fulcrum…if you don’t have something on which to stand, then where can you go from there?” he says. “That’s the base of humanity, it’s how we keep the species alive and it’s something that doesn’t change.”
“What is most interesting to me now is the fragility of humanity. This is how I feel about the world at this time. Personally we are fragile and the world right now is fragile. There is a precariousness to the human race…The only salvation for the human race would be something spiritual.”
“I hope my work can be a window on another dimension of the world, a heightened awareness.”
For himself, Le Duc also creates a heightened awareness. “I don’t just want to make art that is easy to understand, [though I want people to have access and I don’t want to be obscure] but I want to make things that feel real to me. Some artists do market studies but what I am trying to do is more like extreme sports. It creates destabilization in the observer. Not something prepackaged but that has an element of risk. Until the last moment, I don’t know what that work will give. The risk is what drives me.”
The paintings are an exposure of something that is usually hidden, the fact of making them is a risk and an exposure with the intention toward making the gaze sacred. That is the work of turning from a purely aesthetic gaze to the effort required when we allow something to work on us, expose us—the viewer or the maker—until in penetrating the essence of the thing, we learn to love.
April 2012