YVES TREMORIN, Saint Malo
A ROSE FROM HIS MYSTIC GARDEN
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day. Emily Dickenson
Some say
the same of a rose.
I post it just
begins to live
today.
YVES TREMORIN, rose 2014, Courtesy of the artist
MICHAEL C. MCMILLEN from Paris via Los Angeles
Dear cousin Rosanna,
Greetings from France via Los Angeles,
As you know and can tell from the photos below, I’ve just returned from a month long project in Paris where I have finished a new work, The Entropic Taxi; Final Destination. The curator has said it was the nucleus of the exhibition ‘All That Falls‘.
It is at the Palais de Tokyo until September 7, 2014.
The labyrinth-like installation features 4 recent short movies and is built entirely from materials I collected in California for over 40 years.
The ancient car is a 1930 Citroën ‘Rosalie’ which belonged to a friend’s grand father. It had been sitting in the woods of the Loire valley for many decades until we hauled it back to Paris for this final appearance. The installation is being well received and has the effect of ‘taking you out of Paris’ as soon as you walk through the doors.
It was an exciting and intense month (3 week install) and Lauren joined me there for the opening and a week of being ‘tourists’ and visiting friends in and outside of Paris.
Michael
Michael C. McMillen, The Entropic Taxi; Final Destination, 2014, courtesy Michael C. McMillen
Photo: André Morin.
Michael C. McMillen, The Entropic Taxi; Final Destination, 2014, courtesy Michael C. McMillen
Photo: André Morin.
Michael C. McMillen, The Entropic Taxi; Final Destination, 2014, courtesy Michael C. McMillen
Photo: André Morin.
Michael C. McMillen, The Entropic Taxi; Final Destination, 2014, courtesy Michael C. McMillen
Photo: André Morin.
Michael C. McMillen, The Entropic Taxi; Final Destination, 2014, courtesy Michael C. McMillen
Photo: Michael McMillen
Exhibition view “All that falls”, 2014, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, (France).
LUCAS REINER An American painter in Rome – 3
“A ladder rising
wondrously to
heavens vault:
10 steps that
strangely
vivify the soul” Theophanis the Monk
…perfection…
As a step that has no limit …
JEAN – LOUIS GARNELL from Chatenây-Malabry (France)
…Ayant fait surgir le cheval du vent (traduction du tibétain lungta.”Lung” signifie vent et “ta” cheval), nous pouvons nous accommoder de tout ce qui se présente dans notre état d’esprit, sans problème ni hésitation. Ainsi, en appelant le cheval du vent, nous accédons au fruit de l’invocation du drala secret, qui nous est l’expérience d’un état d’esprit exempt du bavardage mental, dénué d’hésitation et d’incrédulité. Nous faisons à l’instant même l’expérience de notre propre état d’esprit. Cet instant est frais, jeune et virginal. Il est innocent et authentique et ne contient ni doute ni défiance. Il est naïf, au sens positif, et complètement frais...
Chögyam Trungpa Shambhala, La voie sacrée du guerrier. Editions: Points Seuil 1990 Pages 116-117. Shambhala, The sacred path of the warrior, Shambhala Publications Inc. 1984
Langage un peu ésotérique, mais une belle résonnance avec le Thinking fresh, n’est ce pas? J-L G Exoteric language, and yet a it resonates nicely with ‘Thinking fresh,’ doesn’t it?
…Windhorse is a translation of the Tibetan lungta. Lung means “wind” and ta means “horse.” Invoking secret drala is the experience of raising wind horse, raising a wind of delight and power and riding on… Having raised your wind horse, you can accomodate whatever arises in your state of mind. There is no problem or hesitation of any kind. So the fruition of invoking secret drala is that you experience a state of mind that is free from unconscious gossip, free from hesitation and disbelief. You experience the very moment of your state of mind. It is fresh and youthful and virginal.
(Translation discrepancies are the way ideas take a ride in different minds, and they are interesting.) RA
An American painter in Rome – 2
Pine Tree on Viale delle Mura Gianicolensi – behind the American Academy
A pine tree collapsed
leans on a wall
behind an American Institution
as if exhausted or sleeping.
Waking up the pine trees
Pining
Longing
Nostalgia
Melancholy
when encounters
with timeless art
was
reading the news.
Ruins of a Church – Garden of Nimfa
YVES TREMORIN from Saint-Malo, France
Des images faites dans les jours derniers pour réfléchir, to ponder on them
And I ponder over the artist’s act of reflection. Words are not the equivalent of his experience, nor of flowers or their images. They dig around trying to to find some light on their way across darkness.
Yves Trémorin holds two shovels in one hand: one is science – he is a mathematician – the other is art. There is a third device with no name: “a part of a whole which has not yet materialized,” Claude Lévy Strauss calls it “magical thought.”
See, I’m keeping my intuition from growing impatient, and stay for a moment on the pond of Trémorin’s thoughts. What happens when he grabs an image using the camera as a medium (nothing to do with Marshall McLuhan), as a revealing lens. The flower is isolated from the garden, a crown of petals born to loose flash and colors very quickly and fall down, withered. Yet, over the living time the botanical specimen – a poppy – spreads the same power as flames; a loud, hidden voice trills against the sun setting its sleep.
Yves Trémorin, Fleur de pavot, 2014
Death and birth are exceptionally close in flowers’ lives. The hydrangea therefore, (hortensia), plays the population game, like a sponge covered with butterflowers on the verge of flying, green flakes hardly touching their mother plant.
Yves Tremorin, Hortensia, 2014
Closer and closer to the objects of observation, the mechanical-digital and the human eye, and our eyes as viewers move from the initial idea (such as recognizing the flower, its botanical classification, naming it) to a completely different mental territory, where thinking stops.
Let me paraphrase Viktor Sklovskij: infinite lines can be parallel, you can trace from a point more than one perpendicular to a line. In a non Euclidean geometry all these things are possible, very much looking like comic jokes that don’t make us laugh more than a stomach-ache. “How” is the point. It’s also my point here, how we observe, how we are not what we believe. How we become flowers.
LUCAS REINER encounters ancient timeless art – thoughts about it
Rome
Red
Underpainting on panels
Icons
Ascent
Pines of Rome
Ladders of Divine Graces
Ascend / Descend
Umbrella crowns
Clouds upon which angels dance
in Basilica Santa Maria Sopra Minerva built
upon the foundation of a temple dedicated to Isis
Filippino Lippi fresco
Seen as if through a giant key hole
the columns and the images of columns /
blur
and the sky starts swirling
LUCAS REINER, red roman pine, 2014 watercolor on paper
From Chatenay Malabry near Paris, (France), UNE PEINTURE BY JEAN-LOUIS GARNELL. Pigments sur toile de lin, 130 x 100 cm. First title: #10 2014.
It’s the eye of the morning, or Spring as an organism, the mystery of birth. Le printemps is a masculine word, la primavera is feminine, and spring-time, or spring-tide, is neutral. What do languages bring to the mind, beyond the idea that “the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits … and who shall say between Man and Woman which is the most delighted?” Keats, 1818. Keats again: “I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness – I have not read any Books – the Morning said I was right – I had no Idea but of the Morning and the Thrush said I was right.” (Letter to Reynolds)
I’m not suspicious of clarity, which in France is a cultural obligation and the threshold of style, and makes you wonder what humans really are. RA
On April 28, Garnell replied: “Le titre de la peinture est dorénavant: The Eye of the Morning.” L’oeil du matin.
He also sent a poem of the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer: Madrigal
J’ai hérité d’une sombre forêt où je me rends rarement. Mais un jour, les morts et les vivants
changeront de place. Alors, la forêt se mettra en marche. Nous ne sommes pas sans espoir.
Les plus grands crimes restent inexpliqués, malgré l’action de toutes les polices.
Il y a également, quelque part dans notre vie, un immense amour qui reste inexpliqué.
J’ai hérité d’une sombre forêt, mais je vais aujourd’hui dans une autre forêt toute baignée de lumière.
Tout ce qui vit, chante, remue, rampe et frétille ! C’est le printemps et l’air est enivrant.
Je suis diplômé de l’université de l’oubli et j’ai les mains aussi vides qu’une chemise sur une corde à linge.
From: BALTIQUE et autres poèmes, 1989, Le Castor Astral (France), Les Ecrits des Forges (Québec), p.137 (French translation from Swedish by Jacques Oudin)
I inherited a dark forest where I rarely go. But one day the dead and the living / will switch place. The forest, then, will start marching. We are not without hope. / Despite the action of all the polices the bigger crimes will not be explained. / In our lives as well, somewhere, there is an unexplained, immense love. / I inherited a dark forest, but today I move to another forest flooded by light. / All things that are alive sing, shake, climb and wriggle! It’s springtime and the air is inebriating. / I have a degree from the oblivion university, my hands as empty as a shirt drying on a rope. (English translation from French by RA)
You must be logged in to post a comment.