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Painting in the negative Itzhak Goldberg

Gilles Teboul uses the term ‘erasing’ when speaking of his recent paintings. It’s nothing scandalous at first glance. For a long time, negation of the form has been a constituent element of modernity. One need only evoke the famous example of Rauschenberg who, in an iconoclastic gesture, erases a drawing by de Kooning. Moreover, the nonfigurative appelation clearly indicates that contemporary art is crisscrossed by a constant refusal ; the same de Kooning, when speaking of artists of his generation, declares that they spend less time defining « what can be painted and more time talking about what can not be painted. ». Often, creators take the paradox to its extreme degree, making this fundamentally negating process the core of their production.

But is ‘erasing’ the real subject here? Not completely if we refer to the dictionary definition of this activity as one whose aim is to make that which was marked disappear without a trace. It is true that Teboul’s scraping technique erases the top coat of color covering the canvas, but this naked exposure creates serpentine lines which snake across the surface. In other words, the white tracks incrusted in the black background are not traced by the painting but they are its trace.

Can we thus speak about reserves? This procedure, which attained nobility with Cézanne, consists in allowing the artist to make the concealed parts of the painting appear : the preparation or the prime coat. Nonetheless, this passive componant, in counter relief, usually contents itself with a modest role, as if in retreat.

 Here, everything brings us to think that Gilles Teboul is negotiating a reversal of roles ; by actively fabricating the reserve, by digging into the paint or underneath the painting, he reveals another one which becomes the true subject of the work.

 The artist undoubtedly knows that in drawings with washes or waterpaints, the reserves correspond to light parts of the composition ; they are more intense than the white obtained with pigment. We then say, reserving the light. In other terms, with Gilles Teboul, by coming up to the surface level, by becoming visible, the reserve shows no more reserve.   

Gilles Teboul uses the term ‘erasing’ when speaking of his recent paintings. It’s nothing scandalous at first glance. For a long time, negation of the form has been a constituent element of modernity. One need only evoke the famous example of Rauschenberg who, in an iconoclastic gesture, erases a drawing by de Kooning. Moreover, the nonfigurative appelation clearly indicates that contemporary art is crisscrossed by a constant refusal ; the same de Kooning, when speaking of artists of his generation, declares that they spend less time defining « what can be painted and more time talking about what can not be painted. ». Often, creators take the paradox to its extreme degree, making this fundamentally negating process the core of their production.

But is ‘erasing’ the real subject here? Not completely if we refer to the dictionary definition of this activity as one whose aim is to make that which was marked disappear without a trace. It is true that Teboul’s scraping technique erases the top coat of color covering the canvas, but this naked exposure creates serpentine lines which snake across the surface. In other words, the white tracks incrusted in the black background are not traced by the painting but they are its trace.

Can we thus speak about reserves? This procedure, which attained nobility with Cézanne, consists in allowing the artist to make the concealed parts of the painting appear : the preparation or the prime coat. Nonetheless, this passive componant, in counter relief, usually contents itself with a modest role, as if in retreat.

 Here, everything brings us to think that Gilles Teboul is negotiating a reversal of roles ; by actively fabricating the reserve, by digging into the paint or underneath the painting, he reveals another one which becomes the true subject of the work.

 The artist undoubtedly knows that in drawings with washes or waterpaints, the reserves correspond to light parts of the composition ; they are more intense than the white obtained with pigment. We then say, reserving the light. In other terms, with Gilles Teboul, by coming up to the surface level, by becoming visible, the reserve shows no more reserve.