« Out of boundary. »
The artworks of Julien Fesil, alias Par ∫ Défaut, plunge us into a deep doubt about our own reality. Like a dream whose shapes we try to memorize, when waking up, before the memories are distorted and our perception is blurred. Some images persist, the details multiply and overlap. As the minutes pass, our memory plays tricks on us, depicting an alternative to the good conformity of the scene. A character who goes around in circles, stuck in the scenery, this glitch that tries vainly to escape the limits, trapped in a universal and all-political interstice. The lines converge to this central point of Alberti, shaping dreams & ideals by unfolding plans on the linen surface.
The artist is a master of the oil painting technique. Free from all constraints, he plays with speeches about art and us, the spectators, to create a world where the edges of reality become blurred. In the apparent chaos of the works, a long-thought-out composition is revealed.
Each one becomes a real drawer, a complex opening, in which the symbols have been carefully thought out. The details proliferate under these browns that drown us.
*Out of boundary (oob) :
Term used in video games to define the techniques that allow the player character to bypass the area in which he or she is supposed to play, either by being under, or above, invisible barriers. It also describes the bug that occurs when the protagonist interacts with the undetectable boundaries of the programmed world. For example: a character whose arm disappears when approaching a non-existent wall, a true glass barrier felt in gameplay as impassable, despite its apparent visual non-existence.
Surreal combinations emerge: thickly painted sunflowers are confronted by the smooth nuances of Gothic architecture; inflexible lines approach a stag on alert; pixels stand next to the familiar face of a woman; and a peaceful moor collides with a tumultuously abstract fire.
Here, we remain surprised by an anachronistic present, where mythology, allegories and references all contemporary and autobiographical meet. Would it be a future, or was it a past?
Strict figuration doesn’t prevail over form, line or color.
The abstraction is freed from the simple decorative background to express itself fully. Geometric shapes, bright colours, handwritten writing and highlights of light are self-contained on the surface. At the heart of these elaborate compositions, a breath of freedom seizes us. The dichotomies remain little and the wars of clochers are dying under the masses that absorb the light.
Julien Fesil ∫ Par-Défaut, multiplies the realities, and digital is one of them. Far from making its paintings smooth, databended patterns (visual bugs in the computer data) appear as anomalies in the perception of the image. Our senses, once again, are disturbed and amused.
What if, in the end, all this was only an impression of our world that was?
Marie Lingl-Rebetez