Anne Emery by Pierre Wat

Vestiges of sensation - acrylic and oil on canvas 73 x 92 cm - 2012- (The cross third series of four)

Vestiges of sensation by Pierre Wat

Here, each painting is like a trap where it is good to get caught, but also frustrating, at the same time. Because the space there seems welcoming, even soft, sometimes, like a cloud of pink cotton wool, to suddenly become flat and impenetrable, a way of waking up those who have caught themselves dreaming of a painting where we can shelter.

“I play,” says Anne Emery, “between the abstract and the represented. »: we would rather like to say – we who are played by her works – that she oscillates above all between absence and incarnation. Sometimes the painting becomes flesh, or, at least, a tactile sensation of the human presence, sometimes, yes, it is truly abstract: pure painting reminding us that even the most mimetic art can only evoke the elusive reality on the mode of absence.

If we had to find an image, to try to name what we experience in front of his paintings, both large and small, it would undoubtedly be that of the cave, as here the space is a hollow, into which we aspire to penetrate. But today, Anne Emery leaves strange shapes lying around in this attractive cave: fragments of bones, scraps of patterns, veils of paint which we do not know if they hide or reveal, which are all vestiges of the world, and of his feelings. Vestiges as if to tell those who are looking that if they allow themselves to be trapped they will experience at the same time the pleasure of seizure and the experience of loss: like a sweet and frustrating lesson in painting.