For almost 50 years Hervé Télémaque has been creating works sprung from encounters, memories, conflicts and connections which, according to what he says, essentially consists in playing with appearances. This exhibition brings together all the various aspects of the production of one of the most outstanding artists from the Figuration narrative: a hundred paintings, collages, assembled or imaginary items and drawings.
Decoding current events and exploring his own fantasies
In the late fifties Hervé Télémaque discovered Abstract Impressionism in New York. But as soon as he arrived in Paris in 1961, he attempted to set himself apart from such notorious pop formalists as Warhol or Lichtenstein whose attitude precluded any form of commitment or criticism of the consumer society and therefore chose figurative art. In 1964, the exhibit entitled Everyday Mythologies, organised with Bernard Rancillac and Peter Foldes, while drawing on the techniques of pop art, took a critical view of the objects we are surrounded by. Hervé Télémaque was born in Haïti, spent time in New York and became French by choice. Neither totally white nor totally black, he draws from his biography in order to create works which are full of everyday items, animals, words that create a very rhythmical and colourful narrative fiction. Borrowing from advertising, the media, comic books and everyday items, his artistic vocabulary seems to be a means of decoding reality and exploring his own obsessions
Du coq à l’âne
This expression, literally going from the rooster to the donkey, ie going from one extreme to another without establishing any obvious logical link, probably illustrates at best a life and work built on paradox. Each new technique or series brings out a new dynamic to his work. With three dimensional imaginary items, which he calls “lean sculptures”, Télémaque gave up painting for a while. He went back to painting with collages of paper cuts, and tracing paper in the series entitled Saddles or others which like African Sidewalks were inspired by occurrences in Africa or, more recently with the Donkeys series. As for drawing, it is at the very heart of his oeuvre and plays an overwhelming part both in the preparatory drawings for paintings like the Valley of Omo, which required countless studies, and in the recent series done in charcoal and coffee grounds. When he paints he keeps drawing, points out Philippe Dagen.
Illustration: Fenêtres de fou 2005, Serigraphy on paper, 100 x 85 cm, Private collection ADAGP Paris 2005
PUBLICATION :
Exhibition catakogue. Foreword by Philippe Dagen. Collection. Un timbre, un Artiste Copublication École nationale des beaux-arts / Musée de La Poste, 100 p., ill, 23x26 cm, 20 €
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