'Vanitas of metamodern'
Plato said: ‘Immortal souls are enclosed in mortal bodies’. Then Titus Lucretius
in his poem ‘On the nature of things’, like existentialist A. Camus, elaborated on the futility of an irrepressible thirst for life and inability to achieve life satisfaction, investigating the image of Sisyphus and his inefficient labour.
François Réau creates mellowed graphite outlines, descending like Dionysian streams. François extends life contemplation with his ‘camera obscura’ installation, implementing malnourished branches into a flux of mirrors, a vanitas symbol of impermanent beauty and reflected false essence. Corine Borgnet chooses Vanitas materials: bird bones. The creatures seemed to seize the ease of being, but ‘In icti oculi’ everything passes and the viewer beholds lifeless animal remains, whispering ‘humana vana’. Corinthians 15:52:‘It will happen in a moment, In the blink of an eye, at the last trump’.
The masters of the Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish painting (Juriaan van Streek, Pieter Claesz)depicted a decaying flower or fruit, polemicising on vanity.
Job 14:2: “Man is <..>like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away”.
Earthly and heavenly, Cartesian and dreamy, fragile and durable metamodern visual language articulates the life in its final stage. François Réau, Corine Borgnet and Ekaterina Panikanova will open up a profound discourse:What is eternal? “Ars longa, vita brevis” (life is short but art is eternal).
Author: Yankovskaya Yana

Artists: François Réau, Corine Borgnet, Ekaterina Panikanova