At a collector

Private exhibition with one of my collectors. Paris Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Private exhibition with one of my collectors. Paris Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Miami

Another view of the same exhibition.

Another view of the same exhibition.

2007, Series of paintings on canvas, 30 x 40 cm.  -br- View of the Fessard exhibition, rue du Faubourg St Honoré, Paris.

2007, Series of paintings on canvas, 30 x 40 cm.  -br- View of the Fessard exhibition, rue du Faubourg St Honoré, Paris.

Hence these pains ...

Can we paint after the Holocaust? Paint the very trace of absence. Paint the absence of traces. This is precisely the dilemma that NKF seems to be struggling with. And it is this debate that is at the heart of all his work. Life at home seems sweet to us, but sweet behind the barbed wire. NKF paints on the razor's edge with the blood of our wounds. She weaves her canvas. His star. But she is not talking about Jewishness, just our survival, all survival.

It is not surprising that after Rembrandt and Soutine, NKF in turn attacked the skinned beef. But, going back to the Rembrandt painting that we can admire at the Louvre, have you noticed, behind the ox, this woman, present and yet erased? All of NKF's painting oscillates between these two contradictions. Death screaming its truth and life, in the comforting background as much as it can be. But who really can console the murdered beef? NKF? Who knows...

Was the purpose of Nadine Kohn-Fiszel that of skinning proper to the support of being?

The traces - barely traced - in dry pencil, in pure or diluted ink suggest, more than they mark, the movement, the gesture that arose after the asceticism of the "wou wei".

From the flatness of the line or the curve launched without authorization to repent, it arrives with its collage of rice paper, bis on white, plated or crumpled, in dialogue with the strong or light writing,
round or vertical, to reconnect, with the third dimension which
accompanied his beginnings as a sculptor.

Starting from discipline, from self-restraint, the work of Nadine Kohn-Fiszel calls for seeing, to a receptive meditation posture.

Almost nothing fills the interior of the viewer and puts it in the echo of a path initiated by the artist.

It opens the way from self to self, from self to others.

The light touches the overlays, plays with the folds of these sheets without primer. -br The rags come back to life. The bodies blend, between figurative and abstract. -br The rags find their place. -br The lace is exposed. -br The mesh supports, the tar paper protects. -br Every discovery moves. -br The overlays create an order, organize a framework for each work.-brEmotion does not overflow.-br-br-Each work keeps its gravity. -br By dint of ravages, -br  It becomes unique, -br while echoing the whole series. -br We move away, -br we no longer see the materials, -br we no longer recognize bodies, -br we discern shades, -br the diversity of works, -br the unity of the compositions. -br-br The eye enters through all these doors. -br-br We stay on the threshold… -br-
br

Sheets, sheets   stretched over tarpaulins or hanging sheets. It is necessary to raise the head, estimate the dimensions, examine the suspensions, pass between the works to recognize the materials, sheets, pillowcases, rather than the technics : collages, overlays of lace, mesh, paper, on linen or cotton sheets, openwork, overcast, torn but still used. 


Formely Feminine universes, diversion from an annual ceremony of dirty and clean, spreading out before washing and not after, exposure of an intimate, of a family, a known or unveiling of tasks, imprints, or living being?

The Fallers Nadia Blumenfeld Hanged. bodies no longer respond to the breath of the wind. Stretched, the busts are not appeased 


We are at first glance caught and destabilized by the violence that emerges from this body, from this work.  


The work is one body and the body gave birth to this work. Materials, because these are relief works in heaven and earth ink or even between sculpture and bas-reliefs, are the domain of poor art. Sheet, lace, Japanese paper, ink, wire, wax, fabrics. The eyes wrap themselves in this sheet, caught up as by a second skin, by a shroud. We think of footprints, we feel, immediately underlying, the many layers, which came to curl in the footprint, in the initial proposal: we see black and white but the absence of color is not that appearance and it is also in depth.  


Often a work appears and is exhibited, here it is a reverse proposition that is made to us. the work is withdrawn itself, it advances masked, one can see there an inversion, a withdrawal in oneself: outside can create the world.  


Folds, inks, traces, the photos cannot reproduce the full thickness of the proposal ::  We also think of printing, texts. 


The materials and forms destabilize, challenge and give the desire and the need to enter further into this body art and open.  


Above the cliff, in the open wind, you can see the sea beating the rocks and rare bushes hanging on the stone flank twist in space. We can then imagine all at the same time a bird which flies while taking support on the air at rock level and we have the external vision, and suddenly see a fault in this falling there and penetrate, consent to be absorbed and calm dominates, the wind drops, the glow of the center of the earth appears.  


I think of this text by Hans Jonas in « The concept of God after Auschwitz ».   « Tsimtsoum » means contraction, withdrawal, self-limitation. To make room for the world, the En-Sof of the beginning, the infinite, had to contract in itself and thus let arise outside of it the emptiness, the nothingness, within and from which it has was able to create the world. Without his withdrawal in himself, nothing else could exist outside of God, and only his lasting restraint preserves finished things from a new loss of their own being in the divine « all in all ».


Nadine Kohn-Fiszel allows us to see the infinite contracted in itself and it is a rare privilege.

The sculptural materiality of the previous works, architecture of iron, fabric and paper, gives way in this new series to a set of more economical works. If the body remains the essential and throbbing question, it presents itself as an uncertain presence on the threshold of disappearance. Traces and gestures take over from the material: they extend the echo from table to table like so many shadows cast. Doubles of this primary body which seem to remind us, as Clément Rosset writes, that "every painter has the fundamental mission of succeeding or missing his self-portrait (... in the absence of any attempt to appear himself on the canvas)".'" By their fundamental ambiguity, the previous works escaped the name of painting. They affirmed the presence of a body oscillating between structure and disintegration, labile scaffolding of floating sheet, fragile epidermis of paper revealing paradoxical entrails. Table and stele at the same time, the table reappears. The layers of paper mounted on the canvas are, here, integral with their support and gives it a new rigidity.

But, imperceptibly, the folds of the paper remind us of the affinities of the painting with the body. And it is the painting itself which becomes a body beyond all representation.

The series then takes on its full meaning: it presupposes a search in movement that conjures and postpones the completion of the work. Each table carries with it the memory of all the tables in a thickness that is both depth and film surface.

Likewise, the color that appears in recent works is not a surface, but diffuse and underlying, it seems to emerge from the depths. Subtle incarnation offering itself to the eye through the leafing of the diaphanous papers.

Thus, the movement which explores, like an archaeologist in front of a field of excavations, the various implications of this interrogation on the body reveals to us how precious a work is when it manages, as here, to emerge from the depths of images his own questioning.

Pékin, mai, 2012 ,12 juin 2012 

Installation-Ma-River-Pekin-Canton.mp4

How to shape signs-br- How can we suggest through signs a world of sounds, of visual meanings, of new poetical associations, different and yet complementary? -br-Punctuation marks - especially the question mark - give words sonorities that express interrogation in French and Chinese. -br-In this work I have shaped signs: something like new emoticons or smileys, these series of punctuation so often used in e-mail communication by young people, especially in China. -br-br have traced punctuation marks, commas in the shape of pins. I have drawn lines: hyphens, question marks; I have opened and closed brackets; all of them signs of doubt and asides.-br- Parenthesis (brackets), inserted in the text, without modifying its meaning conveys further information. Like an oval door it opens on a space of doubt and questioning. It enables discontinuity and digression; it accompanies my way of thinking and helps limit explanations. -br-This way of thinking and of creating, rhizome -like, proceeds by rebounds and resonance.-br-br Punctuation, which was codified in France as soon as the eighth century facilitates the reading of texts. The written text – up to then interpretable and difficult to segment - was clarified and became a language in itself, modulated by blanks, stops, pauses, and voids. These voids – neither interruption nor nothingness – are in Chinese Art an active principle, engendering breath, and fundamental in the process of creation. Punctuated reading with its changes of intonation, of inspiration engenders rhythm. Melodic inflections, codified cantilation and declamation are made possible. –br-br-In its beginning the question mark was more like a dot topped with a line zigzagging towards the right, no doubt echoing the ascending tone of the human voice. Drawn upside down it rapidly acquired its current shape. (Note that in Spanish there still is an inverted question mark at the beginning of the sentence and a question mark at the end). In (written) French the inversion of pronoun and verb is required. As soon as the eye perceives the question mark at the end of a sentence, the vocal tone is raised as on this flight of stairs.-br-br Transformation and simplification of the Chinese written language occurred later, at the beginning of the twenties, reflecting deep societal change. Punctuation marks replaced “empty words” The particle MA added to the end of a declarative sentence turned it into a question without changing word order. Ma attracted me or should I said fascinated me. Hence I have replaced the interrogative form of my questioning by a sign, compulsory in French; here huge and set between brackets. It punctuates and makes my doubts and incertitude visible while forming another figure of speech, an oxymoron, and an ephemeral installation. If installing signifies staying in the same place, on the contrary, it is due to the constant interaction between different cultures that interrogation is born and lives. Installation involves interactive participation. It is a moment of shared writing, of calligraphy on an ephemeral roll, recoverable like a palimpsest if I do not ink the water with which you will be able to write your quotes, questions and comments. This fugitive moment becomes eternal when recorded and preserved by video. Material substrata are all important to me: they trigger imagination and thought. I have stuck for this installation to the more basic elements used in plastic arts. The number of materials was reduced to give ink, water and pigment better visibility. I have used various materials: zinc acting as the memory of passing time and bad weather; felt and unwoven fabric as memory of habitat, transhumance and clothing; thread and wire. - The metal – sheets of zinc -used for my punctuation marks is a malleable covering material, more or less like a coat. It has kept the traces of its contact with the framework – wooden laths - on which it was laid. The inner hidden side is imprinted, lacquered with dry sap, while the outer side, exposed to the elements - or more poetically to the changing skies – is covered with a whitish layer that protects and characterises it. Simple to handle, zinc has been widely used since Baron Haussmann renovated Paris back in the 19th century. It gives Parisian roofs their architectural identity. For this installation, I have used the zinc of the old roof of my studio. Stocked for ten years, I sometimes made etching plates and engravings out of it but had never dreamed of its current destination. It is impossible to weld old zinc; for this reason I have linked, imbricated the edges of thin plates, then burned and soldered their borders with a blowtorch. The main pieces (7) of my question mark are not connected together and the fractures between them are significant: they obey the geography and topography of the place (here the steps) and allow void to circulate. The cut out zinc sheets become scales, strange carapaces partially covered with illegible red writing, an imaginary/chimerical “shell and bone script”. The supports have been made out of thin strips cut in old zinc sheets.， - Felt is a very ancient material made by pressing fibres and various animal hair, especially wool. It absorbs moisture and is extremely resilient. It is a non-woven textile. Used in the beginning as construction material by nomadic tribes it was later used everywhere, especially in cold windy countries. It absorbs ink and water. Calligraphers use it as blotting paper beneath their drawing pages. It receives the faded print of their written texts and thoughts. It is the symbol of both loss and retention. I must admit: it violently reacts to pigments. It is easy to model and mould but difficult to paint, as water and oil tend to spread on its surface, disrespecting hand-drawn lines. For the last three years it has been the support for my graphite powder, zinc pigment, crayon, pastel and sometimes-acrylic paths and landscapes (which I call my graphitscapes), It covers the screen and the steps. A screen usually preserves privacy, here paradoxically I invite you to walk along and round its panels and lift its curtains. - Paper, which is also unwoven, receives your writings and their projected images. - Pins and thread perform their original function. Pins are a link between body and clothing, sewing and geography. They guide the eye and, blending with lines and drawings, delimit my landscapes. Unlike acupuncture needles, they suggest abandonment of body and meridians but instead invitation to inner journeys (within oneself). - Wire, I have always used as framework and grids. - Staple vocabulary and materials: abandoned, disused, taken back, rusted wire, discarded fabric, darned, disdained… all becoming matter for thinking the future. - The folds of the fabrics, which I work on, bear the marks of passing time; useless miniature dikes and dams catching the eye and trying in vain to modify elements, conditions, and memory. The door and screen lead to thresholds and limits. - About my lettering: unformed letters, indefinite characters, and forgotten tongues, mixed writing, all combined in an unconscious Esperanto. - The colours here are the ones I use most frequently; I associate them with China: blacks, reds, whites, greys, light, deep, dense, thick, intense. Each of them a world, a wave in itself. 。 Conclusion. Some of you will see a human back in the paintings I am showing around this installation. An acephalic (headless), sexless back standing on a threshold, hesitating between present, future and past, that may evoke Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus, described by Walter Benjamin as a body pushing « into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high » And yet the lines I have traced on the felt that covers screen and floor are those of a path. An intimate, individual path, but whose many ramifications we will travel. There, connected to the elements, to other civilizations with their own histories and richness of thought, we will be able little by little to build a common future. For “Croisements” I have tried to weave a web of image, meaning, sound and resonance. The Chinese sound MA fleetingly/briefly takes me to other shores: to the Japanese interval between space and time, to the Hebraic Mah –both pronounced MA. Punctuation -and its varied shapes- makes me meditate on the fertile connections to be found in the Chinese architectural representations of the circle, square and rectangle. The zinc cover with its burnt edges is the beginning of a reflection on skin, sewing and clothing. The rolls of paper carry me to the waves of the ocean; the writing leads me to the river. –br-br    I hope everyone will be able to find in this installation their own intertwining. But which ones…….. ?

The first time I met Ms. Nadine Kohn-Fiszel was during Art Canton 2010, among those art works shown in the Art Fair, not like the other artists who tried to express their emotions and concepts, attempting to display their inner world as much as they could, Nadine wanted to let go whatever left in the past, or existed at the present, or will come in the future. There was a force which contained within her works and dissolved everything in front. “Tombant noir au grillage” is one of my favorite paintings, the composition and perspective of the painting have an invisible power to attract the attentions and grasp the viewer into the “black hole” of memory. The door to the unknown world arouses the curiosity, at the meantime brings the fear to the surface of consciousness. But the iron mesh forges a blockage, symbolizing a memory unbearable to recall, a spiritual struggle, and a painful breath, but everything will be washed away as time goes by. Nadine uses a way of “lightness” to handle the “heaviness” of heart and memory, she guides you to explore far into the depth of memory, meanwhile obstructs the “entry” and “information embedding”. The tableau she presents in a western way has surprisingly the similarity with the one of Chinese ink and wash drawing. Every time when I see the painting, I can’t help holding my breath, the desire of peeking the secrets of soul is increased, but restrained by another kind of power at the same time. The tension puts the viewer in dilemma, and drives him or her to explore more about human nature. It’s as if you were going through a meditation every time when you gaze at the painting. The art work reflects a kind of loneliness and coldness as well as a sense of historical heaviness, moreover, it always give you a feeling of nihility. As Genesis of Bible says: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth with “word”, but Nadine dissolves what He created with her “painting”. The installation “Ma River” is surrounded by her paintings in EMG Gallery Beijing. The huge reversed question mark made of the metal zinc is placed on the ascending steps in the center of the art space. On the top step there is a big dot which is part of the question mark, symbolizing the origin of everything in the world. In Chinese, the word “ma” is put at the end of the sentence, thus becomes an interrogative sentence. And the sound “ma” is the first incantation (dharani). “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “let there be light”; and there was light”. God created the world with “word”, and the “word” is the sound made out of God. The installation draws the viewer back to the beginning (the origin), and confronts him or her with a big question mark “why”. On the other hand, the reversed question mark suggests that the earth is only the shadow of heaven, and what we see with our eyes are only the reflection on the surface of water. The “ human backs” in the paintings around the installation stand in the threshold, hesitating between past, present and future, but all the forces come from the origin, the source, and the question mark, everything is connected, and all those paintings become the extension of the installation. What is to be is decided by what it was originally. The installation generates a great power at the centre like a spring of water, and the spring becomes a river, and the river flows into the sea… “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me”, here “me” stands for “ma” – the question mark ”?”…

Overview on a place.

 The video, produced, following the Beijing exhibition, was then an integral part of the interactive installation " Ma river ". the installation has been significantly modified to suit the exhibition in Guanzhou, instead of the interaction with the first video. 

More than 50 medias reported the exhibition, i ncluding news papers,magazines and websites:      

《中国日报China Daily》：

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2012     

Suspended, heavy, sometimes animated by very slow waves which multiply the movement of the hanging bars, these sheets reflect in their weight, the gravity of the bodies they evoke.
Footprints, body negatives, trunks without legs, without arms, without head, almost without sex.

Body all the same, we recognize the torso, the attachment of a shoulder, the roundness of a hip. Evoking ancient embalming, burial in foreign lands, burials without a tomb, bodies without burial, blackened, burnt carcasses, the forms respond to each other from work to work, coming out of the sheets, by dint of overlays, or penetrating, turning with your back to the viewer, in a flat and flexible world, dark and pale, rough and soft.

shrouds without face, are they old dead, memory of the dead or alive, doubled, glued, torn, patched up, supported at the limit of a past and a present, a present and of a future?

Ravaudage, Catherine Ifergan.