From the Cosmos into the Mine Picture exhibitions by Peter Valentiner and Rudolf Pijpers
In the sixties and seventies, Peter Valentiner used camouflage nets to transform parks and streets into mosaic-like landscapes. A...
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Extract "Les camouflages de Peter Valentiner" de
Beatrice Janicot
Because one day in front of the debauchery of the military tarpaulins which spread out at the flea market, their market of fools, Valentiner woke up. His picky eyebrows then grew into circumflex accents above his dotted eyes until they metamorphosed into a question mark for the left and an exclamation point for the right. And that's why he left his war paint to put on his pale face. He left his brush which painted shooters to study the clothing of these shooters and the way in which their aggressiveness was conditioned and programmed. The artist shifted his focus away from symbols and instead delved deeper into the sources of the myth. He found the key word, the word with a double meaning, with a practical and mythical meaning: camouflage. And seeing that the war was hiding in the path, he took to the maquis and the hidden war path in order to better demystify it. Finally the brushes relegated to the broom cupboard of the museums and galleries of the institution, he took the own weapons of the warriors, the double-edged weapons, like his own weapons of art.
The artist found a magical word: "camouflage", which unlocked the doors of the magical realm. This showed him the importance he did not yet suspect, was how present in the historical and cultural tradition of man.
Thus, to cite just two examples, camouflages are the allegories and symbols of mythology when its parables are expressed in a language disguised as poetry: they are then called "metamorphoses". As for the ultimate camouflage of man and animals, is it not the work of death which transforms them into dust similar to the dust where death has laid them?
Admittedly, "camouflage" is a magical concept and Valentiner, by exhibiting it, invites us to walk through its doors and discover its magic ourselves. However, beware of magic is also the approach that Valentiner proposes to our reflection. Peoples among whom the foreigner named dollar has come to wage war, beware of nature because behind every tree is a hidden soldier! It is Shakespeare's forest on the move. Beware of poetic metaphors and beware of painters. Remember the first vocation of Adolph Hitler and know that Monet painted the first water lilies-camouflages for the French army.
Finally, dear reader, allow me to ask you a question: “when will you leave your camouflage? »
We're talking camouflage here...
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