THE WHY AND THE WHEREFORE

What runs throughout the work of Yvan Le Bozec, and no doubt constitutes it, is the patient, discreet exploration, carried out with a light touch, of what can still be achieved under the name of “art”. In his case, being an artist means trying to constitute the inventory of occurrences and possibilities; it means going through the available hypotheses in order to check their validity (or not). Yet his attitude is anything but theoretical, in the sense that there is nothing that exists in this context that does not undergo experimentation and execution, however modest or ridiculous the result. With Le Bozec the experience of art draws extensively on painting and drawing and occasionally on video and a few other tools including installation in space and, exceptionally, design. Using these resources he does, in his discreet way, confront the big questions: the medium, the present state of painting, the position of the artist – all this via a rather personal conception of the self-portrait, as well as the issue of tone, of the tone taken on by any position when, beyond outward appearances, it proves to be this global and significant.

... using an old map of the island of Utopia which he would reprise in an exhibition at the Taejon museum in Korea, and later at Galerie Polaris. And the two big Ys stealthily approaching it can be read as what little has been won from the uncertainties of art, a kind of synthesis of drawing and painting which has to do less with installation than with a singular, uncompromising will to test the space remaining to art.  But as always with this artist, the subjacent gravity, the emotion those pierces through and threatens, are contained by a consummate skill at changing direction, which is the source of his characteristic elegance – his volte-faces, which are rather neatly summed up in the title of the piece Youkali. It is taken from a song with rather inane words by Roger Fernay that were put to music by Kurt Weill. It’s a bit stupid and it’s light; and if Le Bozec likes it so much, as he likes light music in general, it is because, when used as an antidote to impending pathos, overt sentimentality, the subtle brittle effect of intelligence and joyous blanks in meaning are so many discreet remedies for our age, which is sometimes unable to protect itself against arrogance and cynicism, against stupid bestiality.

                                                                                    Jean-Marc HUITOREL

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