Paintings
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Photos
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I
This series is on the paintings and life of Jean Louis David.
It is also on today's taste and today's popular culture.
• The series is based on a set of black and white reproductions of Jean Louis David paintings joined and published in 1946, by André Maurois (Les demi-dieux, Editions du Dimanche) and found in the basement of an antique bookshop in the village of Redu, Belgium.
Colour is added then, creating a first contrast, a new update visual atmosphere.
Finally 3 D (current) objects or collages placed in front of the painting or on it, editing the final result and giving today's popular flavour and a final contemporary output.
• JLD had a vibrant and afflicted life.
From painter, to activist, to politician, to exile, on the complex period of the occidental history’s final XVIII and early XIX centuries.
• The chosen themes give an overlook of David's motifs and influential genres he used.
• On taste and culture, as JLD is an icon of neo-classicism, regarded as one of the most solid French painters, paving the road to modernity that departed from rococo style and entered into a more formal neoclassic one. The rebirth of classic rules and heroic themes, of new political arising ideas, representing metaphors of great achievements and its moral and ethic integrity.
But then:
Time passed, taste changed and popular attitude towards heroes shifted and today’s taste is framed by images, TV, videogames, films, attitudes, truths and lies.
The present momentum is added by objects, paper cuts, found in popular trade fairs, low-price Asiatic shops, newspapers and magazines reflecting taste, societal concerns, marketing and merchandising advertisement.
The final result ?
A box of contemporary images creating mix feelings and interrogations, opposing classical background to today's colourful curiosities. The result is somehow intriguing as austerity, heroic attitude is mixed as in a funk pop shop reflecting today's eclectic and global taste.
What the hell is the artist trying to say? Is this a painting, an installation, a manifesto, a bad-taste exhibition on current objects?
He's he speaking on integrity, on culture?
He's he just joking with images, words and objects?
The final output was really to create a clear gap between the ideas subjacent to David’s, used as baseline and the final ideas resulting from the overall work – It's the contemporary attitude towards the subject that is really the final result.
II
The artist also adds to this, a collection of photos taken close by the main works at the Louvre and Musee Royaux de Belgique, and they are also part of the JLD curiosités pop serie.
Technique and sizes
Acrylic on paper, glues, collages, objects
Variable size from 31x24x9cm to 62x72x9cm
EdCa
Ed Ca, is the contemporary artist avatar of Eduardo Carqueijeiro
Born in 1958, Portugal
Education – Lisbon Fine Arts School, Slade School and Central St.Martins
Solo shows and group shows in Lisbon, Brussels, London.
Lives and works in Brussels.
Contact: ecarqueijeiro@gmail.com / ecarqueijeiro@hotmail.com