Jerusalem, the Kotel, the twelve tribes, a menorah, a wall of light. These subjects did not arrive by chance: I am deeply attached to my roots and to my history, and it was natural that they would end up on the canvas.
What I do not decide is the manner. I paint these themes the way I know how to paint — with the means that have always been mine: colour that structures, matter that keeps the trace of the gesture, verticals, rhythm, light. The subject changes; the questions put to painting remain. And I hope the spiritual side comes through them: I cannot decree it, I can only paint in a way that leaves it room.
Three things worth keeping apart
Working on the catalogue of this series, I ended up setting myself a simple rule, and it holds for whoever looks as well: keep apart what the canvas shows, what its title indicates, and what belongs to interpretation.
What the canvas shows is painting: planes, a light, a matter. The title situates it — it says where the image started from. Interpretation is not mine to give. It belongs to the person looking, and they bring it with them: their memory, their texts, their history, sometimes mine, often another.
That, I believe, is what I bring to a subject painted a thousand times, and far better than I ever will: I do not close the meaning. The visible is not abandoned in favour of abstraction — it is transformed until it becomes painting, and enough of the thing remains for each person to find their own in it.
My relation to the texts
I do not paint from a text, and I make no claim to illustrate one. But one does not paint outside what has formed you. What this long history left in me comes down to three things, and I find them in my canvases far beyond this series: a taste for what is passed on without being said, the idea that something covered over has not therefore disappeared, and a trust in light — the light one did not switch on oneself, and which goes on.
I noticed it by seeing canvases painted years apart answer one another: what holds me runs through the work, well beyond the paintings that carry a Hebrew title.
How to look at them
Without instructions. Look first. Recognise perhaps. Imagine afterwards.
Some of these canvases read from a distance as a scene, and close up as strokes and colours; others never quite settle. None of them asks you to know anything in order to be looked at. And if you do know, the painting will give you back what you bring.
The series can be seen in the gallery on this site. If you would like to see it in full, or to talk about it — hanging, exhibition, a meeting — write to me: contact@hervebouhnik.com.