Sauvage

Valfret

FRMK, book is in French

BLABLAA LIFE. blabla DEATH. BLASH THE SHIT. TO BE MORE SPECIFIC, WE COULD ADD EVEN MORE: BLABLA FLOWERS, CRS. BLABLA THE VISCERA, THE MOUNTAINS, THE UNIVERSE. OTHER BLABLALES, LIFE AND SO ON. OUTDOOR TOHU-BOHU, FULL-PAGE GRAPHIC STORM, SAUVAGE EXHIBITS THE THOUSAND FACETS OF THIS LOST ANIMAL WE CALLED THE HUMAN BEING. Behind the helmets, visors and truncheons breathe ordinary men and women, who have to struggle to feed themselves, and sometimes dream of freedom. Sauvage is not an order from the Ministry of the Interior, but the new book by Valfret Asperatus, published by Frémok. He dissects, digests and distorts what he sees outside and what strikes him, what he lives, reveres or vituperates. Bucolic or apocalyptic scenes come out of it, which engage the man in the street as well as the cop, engender disturbing or eccentric monsters, human machines in search of meaning, enjoyment and survival. The talents of our Republican Security Companies are numerous in Sauvage, where they exceed their sovereign functions. They live there on love and fresh water, rediscovering their bodies, whether they replay the Déjeuner sur l'herbe or practice sledding, classical dancing... taking care not to slip on the blood they they spilled. Under the armor is expressed the living being who like everyone eats, urinates, makes love, or all three at the same time during a hike, but never without a truncheon. Their gear is dispersed in the darkness of a forest, a magical place where humans meet beasts. Conditioned reflexes, impulses inherited from the civilized world return at a gallop, as when it comes to charging an innocent deer or bringing back game to a loved one. Valfret Asperatus depicts, in the midst of other obsessions, beings of flesh alienated from their needs and desires, traversed by a violence that surpasses them, or by moments of primal fantasy. But the main thing is elsewhere in this series of paintings, beginnings of stories or open sequences that appeal to the most unbridled part of our imagination. Picturesque as the ponds where they reflect, piss and marry, these CRS become universal figures. Their clothes and rubbish, all that humans have produced that is most stupid, most savagely industrial, invades illustrious paintings, landscapes diverted from Monet become a battlefield. A war rages between civilization and wild life, images of Épinal rubbing off on each other: packets of chips flying in a stormy sky take on a tragic dimension, machine tools become bodies again, enjoying and moaning. The abandoned moult, elements and unleashed sensations blur our perceptions, expressionism and abstractions allow Valfret to render the unbearable lightness of being, under the state of emergency and the heaps of garbage. Sauvage is a dump of colors, textures, diverted signs, a slow digestion between rambling and serious, trivial and sublime, schoolboy and impenetrable questions. All knowledge of the world comes undone there, matter changes state, refuses to be circumscribed, becomes monstrous or fragile, peaceful or terrible. Under the air of the most earthy delirium, Sauvage questions what survives of us in the storm, how we could transform ourselves in another world, how signs, imperatives and prohibitions permeate us, the quest for meaning and primary needs.