Elsa Lopez – 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Be squared<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n E\u2237\u22a1◽◻◼<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00ab\u00a0The abstract drives me to despair, it escapes me,\u00a0\u00bb declared Violette Leduc. A riddle posed by your painting\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel lost before it. A strange paradox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I often hear it said that one must be educated to understand the abstract, and that in this lies its weakness \u2014 less powerful, less interesting than the figurative. Freed from mimesis, released from clich\u00e9, the gaze is lit by an affective and philosophical experience. Your painting holds no memory, no perspective. To arrive at this point, you had to dive into the Crisis, and pull me with you into catastrophe. And there is no other way to exist than to resist: At last permitted to drift, to fantasize in every direction\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elsa Lopez – 2025 Be squared E\u2237\u22a1◽◻◼ \u00ab\u00a0The abstract drives me to despair, it escapes me,\u00a0\u00bb declared Violette Leduc.Which is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-553","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/553\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fredericprat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Which is to say: it stirs questions, discomfort, resistance.
Which is to say: no one understands it.
But what should one understand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is like the raw sun \u2014 harsh, arid, blinding \u2014 upon exiting the cavern, shadowy and sickly-sweet.
And from which the gaze may choose to turn away: one ignores it, scorns it, dismisses it as childish \u2014 a lesser being, stripped of technique and knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But are we not, on the contrary, thoroughly educated in figuration? Conditioned, structured, formatted to recognize and grasp a still life, a landscape, a human figure?
Have we not been taught that this is Beauty \u2014 Fine Art?
Isn\u2019t it the very same gaze that the trusting prisoner casts upon the simulacra of his cave, the eye docile, long-polished?
The abstract escapes me because it sets me free.
For the first time, I am no longer subject to the doxa.
I am free.
Desperately free.
Free to the point of suffocating with anxiety.
We know how terrifying the sudden recovery of freedom can be\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stripped of all its mental protections, it surrenders to sensation.
Things and objects vanish behind the explosion of feeling: lights, movements.
What does the prisoner see, who has never yet seen the sky, if not a riot of unknown colors and unfamiliar forms?
From this arise impressions \u2014 intrinsic, unpredictable, unassignable, outside of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a lightning-flash of creation, escaping us like everything that cannot be understood or retained.
It is neither causal nor narrative, but sudden.
Pure effraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To abolish prejudice, opinion, doxa, in order to reach naked vision.
To escape all pre-vision.
Your painting touches the very edge of existence.
It wipes the slate clean, dismantles habits of thought, dismantles preconceived representations.
It produces the inconceivable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
resist opinion, shame, servility, utility.
Freed from imposed limits, from the teleologies of daily life,
so as no longer to be anesthetized by their prosaic function.
Who, then, could begin to suspect the limits of such painting?<\/p>\n\n\n\n