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Published by The Wharf (France)
published in January 2012
no text
Hardcover, gold butterfly binding
17 x 26 cm
48 pages
photos of installations, drawings, tapestries
Blanquet's works evoke a closed universe, a space sealed off by the very act of drawing, which obliterates any empty white space. The claustrophobia provoked by the abundance of images demands careful observation of the entire composition, drawing the eye to the very spot where the sardonic detail, the pathetic, resides. (Exhibition catalogue of the same name at the Wharf in 2012.)
An exhibition in collaboration with the Comédie de Caen, Centre Dramatique National de Normandie, "Le Boyau noir" (The Black Gut) features a theatrical scenography, where oversized drawings, poised between dreams and nightmares, take shape on the walls like ghostly reminiscences of our own anxieties. Blanquet's characters, sometimes joyful, often unsettling, are distorted in a black and white display where the graphic elements fill the canvas as if to better imprison the viewer, leaving no escape possible.
The entire oeuvre of this artist finds its genesis in painting, cinema, music, and sound, the very mediums that nourished his generation. From classical painting references to comic book productions and alternative graphic works, he has built a personal atlas over the years. From his cave, like Plato's, Blanquet sees and projects onto the paper-this horizontal wall-the wandering, nocturnal shadows that emerge. The survival of these phantoms, ritualized by black and white, constructs, through hybridity, a spectral community of individuals with whom we engage in dialogue, as if these figures were not so foreign to us. Here, Blanquet's expansive, wall-like imagery draws the viewer into a world where fear takes on "familiar" forms.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at the Wharf, Centre for Contemporary Art of Lower Normandy, Hérouville-Saint-Clair, from January to March 2012.
