So What ?

“So what? So here are some of my most recent paintings, made since the solo show at the Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez in Bordeaux in 2023, which laid out thirty-five years of work.

I had to start again: a second wind, another direction, questions, doubts, some withdrawal too, a break, a rupture, a renewal. Give up a character who had been the most faithful of the faithful in everything I made since 1990? But then how do I tell my stories, at once intimate and universal, with my brush? How do I translate the disorder of the world, the anxiety and dread of a corrosive society that keeps drawing itself on our screens and in real life? The fear of repetition, worse, of boredom — for me and for the viewers, without whom my world would not exist.

Economy of means, degrowth, recycling and sharing may be the watchwords of this new body of work. Painting four-handed — not by collaborating with another artist, but by working on top of grounds started by amateur painters, on unfinished pieces, children’s scribbles or the exercises of a school-age intern in my studio. Giving a chance to work otherwise condemned to abandonment and oblivion. Using poster paper, engravings or small canvases already painted by friends or strangers: my mother Reine, Romane, a nursery-school class, X.

SO WHAT? A detour, a diversion, an outline in black — in that sense nothing changes. Toto is still there, alone and lit on a stripped-back canvas, or in dozens in the shadow of the landscapes and still lifes.”

Jofo, April 2025.

An exhibition supported by Château Desmirail.