FLORENCE LAPRAT AT ADA VENTURA

"Friends from Tomorrow"

- Until 03.10.2022

My paintings embody a permanent struggle against the image and tries to avoid being situated in a duality of figuration/abstraction. It is the association between figurative elements and abstract forms acting by evocation that together constitute a sensitive memory for the viewer. The figurative part directs the painting and cognitively completes the abstract forms which are understood completely differently depending on the foreground. These abstract forms are trying to act as reminders of irreproducibility.

These paintings were made after a series of collages, which allowed me to approach the composition in a more direct way. Painting act as a tool of sharpness and savagery in a contained setting. Im still uncomfortable with frames and the staggering set up is an attempt to get rid of them. Mixing dilutions and thick matter such as arabic gum and dammar resin is not dedicated to visual elements but rather to the sensation they provide from which I build a pictural alphabet.

Water is a favourite theme in my work because the light changes with it from one second to the next. It is also an element of which we are mostly made and which acts in a reflexive way reflecting our unstable nature.I am looking for movement and instability in a frame that is fixed by essence. I am more interested in the sensitive memory I have of things than in the things themselves. I try to be a translator of this sensitive memory.

Friends from tomorrow and these fish figures trapped or free, is a serie inspired by my imaginary friend Rodolphe the red fish. Imaginary friends created by the children usually allow them to tame their solitude and push their emotional boundaries. My intention building this show was to portray the nostalgic vertigo and unbalance adulthood brings, as a passageway. This unstable passageway is rocking like a fragile boat facing an uncertain future. The nets are metaphors for our ethnocentric relationship with nature but also for our own internal and mental systems and nodes.

Through non-figured screens and scenes, Friends from tomorrow is a oracle of our perdition, a call to reunite in opposition with lonely mass behaviours, and a reminiscence of our past. Movement allows synchronicity of times, but is also a desperate attempt to avoid time itself in a colourful and illusory cheerfulness.

Pictures by Alice Pallot

© Ada Ventura - Art space 33 Av. de l’hippodrome 1050 Brussels, BE