ROSE, RENONCE À TON NOM: QUENTIN DEROUET
Rose on canvas
38 1/4 x 51 1/8 in
Il est des œuvres qui vous laissent bouche-bée, muet, comme si le silence était utile pour les approcher. Les œuvres de Quentin Derouet font partie de celles-ci. Ce n’est pas un silence inquiétant, mais une douce sérénité, une impression d’infini. Que nous étions seuls. Que nous étions bien.
Léo Panico-Djoued, Jeunes Critiques d’Art, 2017
For the exhibition Rose, renonce à ton nom (Rose, give up your name), Quentin Derouet draws and writes the single line of a wordless, archaic and essential poem. Far from a lyrical gesture, it is a gentle, loving melody that is played out here. Nothing is hidden, everything is offered to the viewer with modesty.
The works created by Quentin Derouet come from the encounter of a fresh rosebud on canvas.
Wood, cotton fibres, a rose. And yet the variations are numerous, these encounters unique. The line echoes from the earliest cave paintings and is already beyond us. We see it for what it is: a dot that stains and spreads, a breach through which a history of painting is revealed. There is essence in these weary strokes, an honesty, a necessary fragility. Rose, give up your tired name. Your history is also your burden.
The trace results from the erasure of the flower. Unburden the symbol, erase to invent anew. In doing so, Quentin Derouet embraces the world through a minimal intervention on the canvases hanging on the gallery walls. We are surrounded by these strokes, which are the primitive cell of the artist's work, of writing itself. What if everything that needed to be said was said with a line?
The day will come when the rose will fade. From red to purple, the strokes will oxidise to black, in a century at least. Time will slowly settle on the pores of the canvas to create new rhythms, new dances.
— Léo Panico-Djoued
