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SOLAR EFFERVESCENCES
Cimaise Magazine N°233 (extracts- Nov. Dec. 1994)
Text from Gérard XURIGUERA
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| Les ilets, 24 x 19,7 inches - 1994 (private collection) |
.. «In their confrontation with reality, certain painters chose to keep their own directive line from the beginning, tirelessly interrogating the uncertainties of the visible, refining synthesis from the problematic. Such is Francis Eck’s case, who understood how to make this well-earned step last and gradually find the inner stregnth necessary for unsheathing his writings. In so doing, concentrating on the intensity of these accords and gathering the maximum amount freed energy, he was able to form his own vocabulary that made its impact and cohesion «by refusing the suitable arrangement». As for his painting, in spite of a methodical thinking that steadied juxtaposed masses, it didn’t encounter its plainsong until the rebellious movement of its components. But beyond these shakey trembling forms that allusively governed the flux, it is the sliding depth of the substance and its critallisation powers that determined the musicality of this art, both lively and flexible.
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La Forme des Choses, 28,7 x 23,6 inches - 1994
(private collection) |
Consequently, Francis ECK uses knife and trowel to structure a more solar-like than tormented rhythm that condenses, mixes and matches, concretizing a shifting touch and dominated by sharpened gestures. In his boiling surfaces, where large lacunar zones breath, the heavily layered areas begin to move, soft and oily, exploding into several undefined centers. They spread frontally, horizontally or vertically, in a chain of solid petrified ramifications by an alert and prudent hand that simultaneously deconstructs and reconstructs the painting. Without altering the global legibility of the design, this sketched filigree work in a common rhythmic sequence is what constitutes the framework.
Thus, there isn’t any question, in the accidental areas of ardent coloration, of evacuating the subject in an acrid density of a founding substance, even if at first sight, the referent gives way to the incessant comings and goings of the values placed in perspective rather than to similitude .»
... «Francis Eck lives on one of these islands that the numbed Parisian, living in a chilling environment, dreams about. A teacher in the beginning, he decides to totally plunge into painting. Working confortably as a goal, he moves to Saint-Martin, an island in the West Indies, away from the theoretical tribulations of the art milieu ..»
«... Accustomed to open spaces, he is unable to conceive a staunch boundary between figuration and abstraction. He prefers to keep up, far from absolete arguments, the complicity between the concealed and the indentifiable, not forgetting that «there is always a subject, whether we like it or not», as de Stael said. And this topic, that we might, in the thoughtless way, think has vanished, always interferes in the landscapes introduced for the spectator’s subjectivity. »
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Alizées au crépuscule, 13 x 9,4 inches - 1994
(private collection) |
...«There are no gratuities in these effervescent and contrasting exchanges : everything here is perfectly assembled, measured, and tuned. Each form appears to be dependant upon the other : no chromatic flow, neither broken nor continuous, can be singularized within the context, and, to this, add an obvious harmony and elegance. Here, one could suppose a well-schooled thinking, but reality of personal experience mixed with an overpowering conviction, sweeps and overcomes any school of thought or hierarchy, merely enhancing the rejuvenating joy of a painter.»
Gérard XURIGUERA
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