photo Carlota Grau
contact : studio@cecilecarre.com
CÉCILE CARRÉ, Nouméa
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“Painting today is an act of resistance. The long years required to invent a personal world demand enormous work—sometimes thankless, rarely understood—a considerable effort. The result is seldom guaranteed. Ruptures and a lack of dialogue make the work of many artists difficult to access.
Cécile’s paintings are the result of a lifetime of observation.
Each line, each patch of color vibrates with an invisible music. Everything tells the story of a sense of wonder before the spectacle of the world.
Beauty is surely in the eye of the beholder, but before Cécile’s paintings, beauty blinds us with its presence.
This personal gaze is an explosion of colors and forms.
How does one invent a language? By searching for an expression that might eventually recount, reveal, and allow us to feel fragments of a world of her own, Cécile has slowly transformed her painting.
Over many years, poetic observation has given way to a mature and rich expression.
The paintings of these recent years are the fruit of an artistic fragmentation of the lived world and the world as perceived. This fragmentation appears on two levels: a fragmentation of the whole, and a fragmentation of detail—of colors and forms. The whole is thus separated and intuitively reconstructed in a symphony that is uniquely hers.
Thus, in looking at her paintings, we return to that first observation: to paint is to ‘love again’ (Henry Miller).
To love the beauty of the world. And to make painting a manifestation of existence, often invisible but always present.”
Gezim Pacarizi, architect
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STATMENT
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Je viens du monde de l’architecture et du dessin d’observation : une discipline du regard qui apprend à voir avant de dire, à comprendre avant d’interpréter.
Durant des années de voyages et d’exploration, mes carnets ont été mon terrain d’apprentissage. J’y ai consigné des fragments d’espace, des études de compositions, des associations de couleurs, certains effets de matière : une bibliothèque subjective.
Cette pratique a façonné ma manière de percevoir le monde. Le temps long de l’observation compose un langage silencieux. Ma peinture est née là.
Couleurs, formes et matières se recomposent comme les éléments d’une architecture, chaque tableau cherchant une forme qui tient, qui abrite. Je prélève dans le réel des fragments que je déplace, simplifie et reconstruis.
Les éléments deviennent cohérents, comme dans une architecture vernaculaire où chaque forme trouve naturellement sa place. Ma peinture cherche ainsi moins à représenter un lieu qu’à en faire apparaître quelque chose : une mémoire, une atmosphère, un rythme, une présence.
Je cherche ce que les Romains nommaient le Genius Loci, l’esprit propre d’un lieu, et sa capacité à nous attirer, à nous rappeler quelque chose d’essentiel, enraciné dans la terre de Méditerranée.
Dans mes compositions, le réel recomposé devient un point d’ancrage : un espace pour revenir au monde et l’aimer à nouveau.
Voir. Comprendre. Fragmenter. Recomposer
Ce lieu là, chacun peut l’habiter.
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I come from the world of architecture and observational drawing : a discipline of the gaze that teaches one to see before speaking, to understand before interpreting.
Throughout years of travel and exploration, my sketchbooks served as my training ground. In them, I recorded fragments of space, compositional studies, color combinations, and textural effects, creating a subjective library.
This practice shaped the way I perceive the world. The unhurried pace of observation forms a silent language. That is where my painting was born.
Colors, shapes, and textures reassemble like architectural elements; each painting seeks a form that holds together, that offers shelter. I extract fragments from reality, then shift, simplify, and reconstruct them.
The elements achieve coherence, much like in vernacular architecture, where every form naturally finds its place. My painting seeks less to depict a specific location than to reveal something about it: a memory, an atmosphere, a rhythm, a presence.
I look for what the Romans called Genius Loci. the spirit of a place, and its power to draw us in, to remind us of something essential rooted in the Mediterranean .
In my compositions, this reconstructed reality becomes an anchor point: a space to return to the world and love it again.
Seeing. Understanding. Fragmenting. Recomposing.
This is a place that anyone can inhabit.
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Cécile is French and lives in Barcelona.
Interior designer graduated from the École Boulle in Paris, she founded her own interior design firm, MisMAS Interiorismo, Barcelona.
Great traveler, she creates travel diaries of architectural observations and has published a book (Carnet de voyage de Noces, Le Seuil 2003) recounting a year-long trip between Istanbul and Beijing.
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