Stasis

Between these temporal pincers, our passions and disorders are stripped bare in front of a mirror. They don’t emerge soothed, quite the contrary, but the slowing of the vital flow, while evoking an inevitable death, draws in all the strength and turbulence of life. Similar images come to mind when I think of the banyan roots entwining the stones of the Angkor temples in Cambodia. Two opposing powers, two titans as if caught in a disturbing kiss. The time of the temple, human power squinting at the vanity of an eternity staged in its privileged relationship with the gods, and the time of nature, hard at work in its cyclical, metamorphic temporalities, deaf and blind to human vanities. Yet this unlikely embrace is only possible through the simple and magnificent idea of slowing down. A concept caught between motion and stillness, stasis is the time when flow and flux slow down to practice incestuous unions with immobility. In this way, the body, knowledge and passion, by practicing the stasis that Still Life has been highlighting for centuries, manage to float in the troubled waters that linguistic subtleties set in opposition: ” Nature Morte ” (Dead Nature) in French, “Still Life” in English. My long-acquired mastery of hyperrealistic techniques enables me to squint at a blink of eternity, while at the same time freeing myself from the goal of deceiving the eye. (…)

Extract from the interview “Les pas de Côté”, with H. L. (2021).