Artist : Patricia Dubien
Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Saint Etienne, artist Patricia Dubien was featured at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. She then held a number of temporary exhibitions at Galerie Jacques Lévy in Paris, as well as at Le Corbusier’s Maison de la Culture. Constantly involved in charity work, she participates in the creation of Amnesty International cards. In addition to her recognized talent as a painter, Patricia is also a photographer and teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Saint-Etienne (ENASE). Website: www.patriciadubien.com
Text by Bernard Point :
“After all, what am I in front of Patricia Dubien’s painting?
A questioning of its infinity, a vertigo of its horizon, a middle ground between heaven and earth. Infinitely far from understanding the plains, the limit of space and its principle are invincibly hidden for me in a secret that is difficult to penetrate, equally incapable of seeing the nothingness of an infinite landscape where I persist in questioning myself. So, at first, all I see before me are flat landscapes cut by hedgerows stretching to the horizon. Closer I read the titles of the works, I discover the evidence of dominant colors: blue, yellow, brown, etc. Sometimes the labels become barely more talkative, providing equally summary details: navy blue, lime green… Yet it’s from the titling of these elementary statements that I become aware of the infinity of these images, concentrated in the radical finiteness of the paint. Opposite me, a flat monochrome oil painting often occupies the lower half of the canvas, which it names, asserting the infinite force of its presence. In a frontal position before the pictorial murality of a construction bearing other elements of contrasting colors stacked on the base. The weight of these masonry colors often squeaks out tonal chords, inverting illusions of distance. For example, a cold foreground, topped by a surprisingly warm band of color, creates perspective by reaffirming the painting’s verticality. Patricia also cuts to the quick by oozing random lines of black Indian ink between these solid-colored backgrounds. The thick, opaque oil paint seems to split, revealing the liquidity of horizontal wounds. The finish of the painted forms tears into the infinity of obscure depths. These fractured and broken lines no longer make me believe in alignments of trees and hedges, but pierce the painting with interstices of profound infinity. […] “.
