Marc Perez: Sculpture

Marc Perez is a French painter and sculptor, born in Tunis in 1955. I found the sculpture above -- Bust, 2007 -- on the Tumblr of the Cavin-Morris Gallery, and I had to find out more about him.

He has a large web site with many images of his work, none with titles or dates. And also lots of pretentious French art criticism. This is from the artist himself:

ller au delà de soi, comme pour se perdre de vue, comme pour sauter l’obstacle de la sincérité… Nous sommes tous prisonniers de notre histoire, de nos idées, sans doute nous faut-il raconter cette prison, mais plus encore, ne nous faut-il pas nous aventurer au delà, au delà de nous- même, ne serait- ce que d’un pas?…

Which might mean something like:

Art must go beyond itself, as much to lose sight as to jump the obstacle of sincerity ... We are all prisoners of our history, of our ideas, perhaps we need to expound this prison, but even more , must we not venture beyond ourselves, if only one step ?

One critic says:

Marc Perez is a warlord (chef de guerre). He throws a shadow army, innumerable and ever exhausted, constantly renewed, strengthened and multiplied on each canvas, drawing supports from wild paper or burnt canvas. Faceless eyes arise, or faces with eyes erased, partial beings gagged, bound, mutilated, advancing irresistibly onward with such strength that you know you cannot make them return. Powerful and castrated. Without arms, without an identifiable face. . . . A primitive horde, unstoppable, advances from within us to face us. They do not speak, they are.

Marc Perez carves. This formless magma of ill-being (mal-être) and the unspeakable gives rise to incisively brushed, brutal forms, fundamental. Freed of anecdote and illustration. Life is not simple and quiet. It is rough and unfinished, in gestation. It is in this life that Marc Perez carves his half-dead uncontrollables.

Marc Perez is a warlord. . . . He exists against the real, that is to say, he produces reality. The painter is beyond imagination, it seems. He paints to exist, in two senses: to be and understand.

Of course that is just my translation, and I suppose there is a slim chance that the original is clearer. But I doubt it. The thing is, despite the mad prose it makes as much sense as art criticism ever does.

I see what he means about the half-dead army. And I think these are cool.