Fabien Adèle Blush

Almine Rech Shanghai is pleased to announce Blush, Fabien Adèle's second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from March 15 to April 13, 2024.

The Risk of the Double

Is it nightfall that gives us the feeling of moving from one painting into another? In Fabien Adèle’s paintings, we sometimes find positions of hands that seem Mannerist and faces in profile as if cut off before speaking. A sense of expectation is created. The artist often produces several versions of the same composition, so that he can adapt to what happens on the canvas, letting his intuition take on different tones. With Deux Figures sur un Banc I and II (“Two Figures on a Bench”) the scene can be tinged with twilight in a russet blue that recalls Leonor Fini, or it can take on a pale yellow dawn with shades of gray in the style of Puvis de Chavanne. The artist is unafraid of doubles, seeing them as a chance for passages, transitions. A shadow becomes flesh, a body becomes a silhouette, in a process of inversion. The artist does not work in series but in echoes, repeating motifs in different versions with particular palettes inscribing phases of earthy ocher or ethereal sand. There are no oppositions between large works and small ones, or between one subject and another, but continuity. Through fragmentation, some motifs acquire an independence that makes them almost into symbols, like the hand surrounded with young shoots in Entre Deux Grains de Sable (“Between Two Grains of Sand”) or the foot that almost crushes fruit lying on the ground in Dernière Nuit. Other subjects, by association, evoke a rebus or even a mystery, like the couples on benches, who seem to hold themselves in an indeterminate dreamlike state.

It is more accurate to talk about figures than characters in his paintings; with few features and eyes that see nothing, their faces have something androgynous about them. They disturb the viewer by seeming to multiply on the canvas, to be moving like Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Time is suspended so that all possibilities can be explored. Fabien Adèle does not refer to textual influences as did the Symbolists or Surrealists, although his work has been compared to theirs. However, his painting still has something literary about it. Without evoking words, and with paintings that sometimes remain untitled, he multiplies stylistic effects such as repetition (as we’ve seen), metonymy (the part for the whole), and chiasmus with its mirror effects. The image is a language unto itself, and this is what he emphasizes, like the American magic realist painters he admires, such as Alex Colville, Andrew Wyeth, and Jared French. Adèle’s compositions can be more or less complex; in his latest paintings, he hints at perspective and makes different planes coexist. The settings of these paintings are minimal: a bench, a window, a flowerpot, or a table, which are more like accessories for interaction or symbols. Fabien Adèle likes to compare his way of painting to the technique of a bas-relief sculptor. The layers of oil paint allow him, without impasto, to affirm shapes through light and to imply the sense of a space that is primarily mental. A space where painting takes on the risk of the double, the doppelganger.

— Henri Guette, art critic

阿尔敏·莱希 - 上海荣幸呈现法比安·阿德勒（Fabien Adèle）的第二次画廊个展「羞赧」（Blush）。展览将于2024年3月15日开幕，并展至4月13日。

替身的风险

是夜幕的降临带来了从一幅画进入到另一幅画的感受吗？在法比安·阿德勒 （Fabien Adèle）的作品中，我们有时能发现人物的手，摆放位置看起来极具风格主义（Mannerism），其侧脸看起来像是即将开口却又戛然而止的画面，由此便塑造出一种期待感。艺术家常会基于同一幅作品的构图为蓝本，创作多个版本，这样一来，他就能随机应变于画布上所展开的事物，凭直觉展现不同的色调和氛围。在《长椅上的两个人物》(Deux Figures sur un Banc）的一号与二号作品中，场景或被染上让人联想起意大利画家莱昂诺尔·菲尼（Leonor Fini）的赤蓝暮色，或展现出带有灰色阴影、皮维·德·夏凡纳（Puvis de Chavannes）风格的浅黄黎明。

艺术家并不惧怕替身的存在，甚至将替身视为嫁接桥段和过渡的良机。在逆转过程中，一道影子变成了肉身，而身体则转化为轮廓。艺术家所创作的并非系列，而是互相呼应的作品，在不同版本中以特定色调反复展现艺术元素，无论是泥土赭色还是空灵沙黄色。大作品与小作品之间，或一个主题与另一个之间并非对立，而是具有连续性。通过碎片化的手法，某些图像元素更是独树一帜，几乎成为象征符号，如《两粒沙之间》(Entre Deux Grains de Sable）中被嫩芽环绕的手，或在《最后一晚》(Dernière Nuit）中几乎要压碎地面果实的脚。其他的画中主题，更是通过联想让人想起神秘事件，比如坐在长椅上的一对夫妇，他们似乎将自己置身于一种无法定义、如梦似幻的状态。

在法比安·阿德勒的绘画中，谈论人影似乎比谈论人物更准确；画中人物几乎不带特征，眼中什么也看不见，脸庞给人中性的感觉。这些人物似乎在画布上不断复制，令观众感到不安，如同马塞尔·杜尚的《下楼梯的裸女》一样呈现动态感。时间在此被暂停，以便能尽情探索所有的可能性。虽然其作品经常与象征主义和超现实主义相提并论，但是他鲜少提及文本的影响。然而，阿德勒的作品依旧带有些许文学色彩。在不唤起文字的情况下，甚至在有时无题的画中，他将风格效果放大，这包括重复（repetition)、转喻（metonymy）及镜像效果所呈现出的交叉句（chiasmus）。

图像本身即是一种语言，这也是阿德勒所强调的，就如同他所钦佩的美国魔幻现实主义画家亚历克斯·科尔维尔（Alex Colville）、安德鲁·怀斯（Andrew Wyeth）和贾里德·弗伦奇（Jared French）等人一样。阿德勒的作品构图或多或少有些复杂；在他的最新画作中，他暗示了透视视角，并让不同的维度平面共存。画中的场景设置通常非常极简：一座长椅、一扇窗户、一个花盆或一张桌子，这些元素更像是互动的象征配件。法比安·阿德勒喜欢将其绘画方法与浮雕雕塑家的技艺相比较。薄涂的油彩颜料层，使他能够通过光线来确认形状，同时暗示精神空间的氛围感受。在这个空间中，绘画承载着化身替身的风险，仿佛幽灵的分身。

文/Henri Guette, 艺术评论家