> 1st salvo : Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon
From 14th September to 31th December 2005
> 2nd salvo : Palais de Tokyo,
site de création contemporaine
From 8 October 2005 to 8 January
2006
In Paris, the Aliment Blanc...
At the Palais de Tokyo, the second part "Robert
Malaval, kamikaze" will bring to light two key moments in the artist's work. It was in 1961,
with the cycle devoted to Aliment Blanc, that Malaval began
an immense piece of work that was to occupy the artist for five long years. Born of a combination of experiences that ranged from observing the behavior of silkworms that he himself raised, to using the carnival techniques peculiar to the city of Nice,
the cycle was to engender a vast series of works that stirred up numerous questions driving the artist at this time in his life.
Robert Malaval, Le Grand Reliquaire, 1961
Whether a materialization of his deep anxieties, a formal manifestation of
the invasion that he was physically feeling then, a concretization of his
hallucinatory fantasies, an expression of his worries about
the illness he was suffering from, an organic germination coming from the
mutant worlds of science fiction, or a visual metaphor that
he invented to give shape to his conception of the contemporary world, Aliment Blanc freely lends itself to
a number of interpretations. And it is through accumulation that we have the
best chance of getting at the truth. For the artist this material perfectly expresses the inner turmoil of his feelings and represents
the best way to make it visible, share its burden, and try to free himself
from it.
There now began for Malaval a great period of appropriating
the world and expressing his urge to alter it according to his lights, directly in keeping with his fantasies
and fears. The small surfaces of the abstract pictures of 1961, with their twisting
folds and frozen forms, were quickly transformed into enigmatic objects devoured by this new living material that now tinged or covered all
the artist's pieces.
The Aliment Blanc became "cultivable" when
it started using candle wax, devouring when it began to wear away bodies, swollen when it inordinately deformed a sofa, organic when it came to life in the form of larvae, mechanical when it slipped into the workings of a machine. The drawings show it expanding monumentally in the plans for the park in Saint-Cloud,
in the streets overrun with foam for a projected Carnival of Nice, or in
the cross-sectional sketches of mutant brains dreamt up by the artist.
The show at the Palais de Tokyo devotes a large section to
the exceptional collection of Aliments Blancs that have been brought together for the occasion. More than 40 years after
its very first exhibition, Aliment Blanc assumes a relevance
and a new gaze to give us a portrait of Malaval the inventor,
an artist identified with a certain material, a certain color, and a certain exponential germinating process
through which he reinterpreted everything and which was in danger of overwhelming
him as well.
...and Stardust
This show also features the pyrotechnics of the artist's last pieces.
There color has become dust, a dust that blazes forth, swirls and vibrates
in space, illuminates and makes everything it touches sparkle. The stars that hang in the heavens
are Malaval's reference, the movements are cosmic, the blues
of these pictures suggest the depth of the sky, the blacks the infinity of space.
Robert Malaval,
Rouge Blanc Bleu, 1980
In 1973 Malaval discovered multicolor glitter. At first discreet,
they were to be used eventually like a pigment that had kept its materiality. Quickly the artist
became aware of the power of this material. We are no longer in
the space of the painting alone, but rather that of the spectacle, the stage
and his shimmering costumes as well. Colors exchange places. Black now highlights movement
while the gesture becomes predominant, essential. Glitter is thrown directly onto the canvas.
They're no longer sprinkled on the paint, they are the paint itself. The music
is visible, rises to the surface, and is now an integral part of the act of painting.
Banzaï, Météor and Guignol's Band
are the titles of these works. Once again Malaval has completely reinvented his painting, making it the exact image of his life:
dazzling, desirable, dicey. He had become a figure on the fringe, rejecting
any concession, never giving in. His career as a rock star lasted but an
instant. He fled the world of art, his obsession now being music in all its forms, the
music that he was listening to constantly, that he took from nature to accompany his works, that played in
his head and nourished him everyday. He was now painting the way he played his music,
like a shout in the face of those who didn't understand him well enough, who couldn't follow what he was doing.
Rock had crossed paths with punks and in
the studio the music was violent, each show became a challenge, each work a fight.
In Créteil, in May and June 1980, the experiment was tough: to paint while the public looked
on. To show everything is to risk everything, too. Forty magnificent works, two
months of hell. A month after the experience he decided to end it all. Accompanied by
the music of Richard Hell, he killed himself in his studio.
La pochette du disque Blank Generation de Richard
Hell
How to get across the intensity of these moments in a show?
Here only the works testify to that intensity. So many of the Poussières d'étoiles
series have never been displayed on a single wall, thrown there as perhaps the painter himself would
have done. Opposite these pictures, the Pastels Vortex drawings,
executed in 1978, recall a moment when violence could coincide with optimism. But the emptiness is
present, and the angry gesture and the whirlwind still lie at the center of the work.
Music, all kinds of music, sounds, noises of the world figure
in the Malaval's universe, are always cited as a reference. For this show they have been arranged and installed
by another artist, Vincent Epplay. Accompaniment of the artworks, restitution
of the context, lyrics by the artist-the soundtrack of the Malaval exhibition is both an original
creation and an homage from one artist to anther who said, "I'm asked about my favorite painter, I'd readily answer,
Beethoven."
Robert Malaval lived everything intensely. A silkworm breeder, artist-dandy,
fan of the Rolling Stones, father of two children, painter of stars, inventor of spaces, creature
of the night, modern kamikaze. And in 1974 he was already writing that "to want to grasp everything
is a terribly dizzying feeling…"
Marc Sanchez
Curator of the exhibition
Robert Malaval, en 1973
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