Gregory Forstner, Flowers for the Bold (40), 2020<\/p>\n
Oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm<\/p>\n
Photo Pierre Schwartz<\/p>\n
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—<\/em><\/p>\n A few months before the first confinement, I made some paintings freely inspired by Vel\u00e1zquez’s dwarfs, whose figures, bulldog heads, held a bouquet of flowers in their hands in an indecisive attitude.<\/em><\/p>\n While the title of these paintings, Flowers for the Bold, literally evokes the bouquet visible in my subject’s hands, it also starts from an often-heard reflection about my work that my painting is for the “brave. A reflection that I consider interesting (even if, I confess, it is also a little<\/em><\/p>\n irritating) because unconsciously it reveals the naive and carnal relation of the spectator in front of any representation and therefore, in a certain way also, the limits of our aesthetic freedom and of the inevitable social and intimate relation that is expressed in front of the subjects in the painting.<\/em><\/p>\n My painting would therefore be for those who admit that a painting feeds on and is part of reality but is not reality. Paintings that only obey the requirement of thought and retina, of sensitivity, and not of a morality imposed by a community whose opinion, necessarily consensual, would reduce both the impact and the scope.<\/em><\/p>\n It would be too simplistic to point to confinement and the resulting social, psychological and professional upheavals in an attempt to explain the evolution of a job. It is possible that the situation we live in has favored certain shifts in my work, it is difficult to say… In general, I trust more in intuition and coincidence. What seems undeniable is that deprived to a certain extent of habits and freedoms a priori acquired in our spoiled and rich societies, our equilibrium has been indisputably challenged. In the same way, my usual ring (the exhibitions, the meetings, the work as well as a certain casualness) inside which I usually distribute my “blows” (my painting), disappears for the public and for myself.<\/em><\/p>\n Gregory Forstner <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":74975,"template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[1113],"product_tag":[1103,1221],"class_list":{"0":"post-81794","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-gregory-forstner-en","7":"product_tag-genuine-artwork","8":"product_tag-peinture-en","9":"product_shipping_class-forfait-standart","10":"tm-has-options","12":"first","13":"instock","14":"shipping-taxable","15":"product-type-simple"},"yoast_head":"\n