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Composition
en blanc
1987
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
61 x 51 x 6,5 cm |
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L'automne
1969-1970
Huile sur panneau
Oil on panel
51 x 61 cm |
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Composition
1998
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
122 x 91,5 cm |
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Sans-titre
1998
Médiums mixtes
Mixed media
76 x 61 cm |
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Montage avec
«T»
1984-1985
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
51 x 41 x 4 cm |
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When eviscerated corpse
is made brimming flesh, (Composition no 1, 1979-1980),
it gives rise to biomorphic, cellular swarming, an organic
vitality of spasmatic vigour. Scalloped envelope, open
coat, its contours retained by ropes to better delineate
it, contain its potential emptying. At the limits of order
and chaos. Then, if “the tear is not to be retorn,”( 1) the paintings, skins, fabrics edged with threads, recall
the suture’s temptation to repair, hold together,
mend what is torn. But this appeal soon transforms into
the display and enveloping of the absent body laid beneath
the shroud, whether made of whiteness or obscurity (Composition
en blanc, 1987).
Working through such polymorphous practices, painter Joseph
Giunta manifests the feeling of Einfühlung, experienced
as the need for self-activity or the relinquishing of
self, projecting his entire interior being so as to produce
a scene of vital feeling.(2) This artistic desire, animated by a vitalist dynamic,
would indeed be read, in Giunta’s trajectory, from
his early work to the present. Hence, from a retrospective
point of view, one is clearly able to perceive the work’s
transformations transpiring through the progressive affirmation
of movement towards “the thing in itself”, towards
a “clear material individuality”, and in the
same progression, abandoning the model in its phenomenality,
the model of nature, its subjectivity and the arbitrariness
of appearing. As well, in this alternation between expressing
the vital feeling, the “play of cosmic alternation
of phenomena”, and the tendency to abstraction, Giunta
gradually frees himself from the prevalence of atmospheric
space (scenes, landscapes) and subjective phenomenality,
reaching towards construction, the individuation of the
objective, plastic fact. Did Worringer not see in the
original artistic impulse, “in the quest for pure
abstraction”, the “only possibility for rest
within the confusion and obscurity of the image of the
world”(3)?
Another play of alternation between chromaticism and value,
where the work is deployed, on one hand, through iridescence,
in the image of the gaudy world, according to an orgiastic
dimension of colour (Fleurs, 1968), and in its
lyrical effusions (L’automne, 1969-1970);
on the other hand, a grey scale passing between poles
of white and black, from light to dark, in ceaseless oscillation.
This scale of varying grays, between lightness and darkness,
may indicate a moment of stasis, affective deceleration,
in a sort of neutral point located at the borders of pleasure
and grief, desire and renunciation, the waiting space
between two doors the painter dares not open. Into this
register of greys are introduced the reliefs of old stones,
antique walls, figures erased by time, vertigos/vestiges,
of which only approximations remain. Kinds of talismans,
cabalistic signs, inviting magic, camouflaging the secrecy,
the temporality, the evanescence of all things. (Composition
no 1/85, 1985; Composition, 1998).
Responding to spasms of the body in turmoil, shattered
territories appear on the paintings (Peinture sur relief,
1989), displacing their tectonic plates, their seismic
jolts, like the marked unfurling of silent flags (Sans
titre, 1998). Spliced beaches, a sedimentation of
superimposed layers that slide prone yet restless, animated
by oscillating movements, vibrations nevertheless infused
with slowness (Noir et blanc, 1985-1986; Montage
avec “T”, 1984-1985). Monuments of the earthly
body tremble on bark-like canvas, made thicker by dull
or vivid material, and activate intensities, speeds, densities.
Within the cyclical alternation between poles, one sometimes
sees a black hole, the black lake of grief and annihilation,
the depth that haunts the surface like a fateful destiny
(Ocre, rouge et noir, 1971), a sort of mirror of
stagnant obscurity. Here and there in the play of surface
and depth, one feels the attachment to the painting’s
support, but also the wild desire to detach from it, rise
up, gain thickness and relief – thereby to elude
pure visibility and penetrate the corporeal and tangible
field.
Another transition soon occurs, departing from the planes
and stratifications of the painting’s surface towards
constructions, where the painter arranges receptive spaces
of the most heterogeneous things. These constructions,
working from the idiosyncratic drips that bind them together
and their way of blending scattered elements through raised
materials, edges, folds, paradoxically make themselves
spatially indivisible and plastically cohesive. The need
to join enclosed, mutually isolated cells (Montage
sur fond vert, 1979) becomes imperative – a need
to bind amongst themselves so many nidifications, distributed
separately over the painting’s surface, and thus
effect the visual and plastic splices so crucial to partitioning.
An attempt to connect what is out of tune, to measure
the distance between dispersed, distended bodies, be they
empty or emptying onto the surface, sometimes as thin
as a fine layer of paper.
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Composition no 1
1979 - 1980
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
122 x 91,5 x 8,5 cm
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Fleurs
1968
Huile sur panneau
Oil on panel
61 x 46 cm
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Composition no 1/85
1985
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
51 x 101,5 cm
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Peinture sur relief
1989
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
41 x 51 cm
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Ocre, rouge et noir
1971
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
51 x 40,5 x 1 cm
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Montage sur fond vert
1979
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
30,5 x 40,5 x 4 cm
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