YMO A fertile universe
texts
Recent Works of YMO - Yvan Moallic
"Observing with the mind
the mind's own brave observations of itself,
enabling us to find
thought can engender from its own
critical density
a fertile universe through which to roam,
which metaphor, in blue or green
or red or white, can designate as home."
(from "Observer" by Robert Pack, in The New Criterion, March 1994)
The poem "Observer" has special meaning to me and my work. Robert Pack himself quotes at the beginning of the poem from the scientist and writer Hubert Reeves, who has been a major influence for a long time on the way I see the world. Reeves tells about a "fertile density" in the universe that gives us both creativity and our own consciousness of it. This has helped me understand that for some time I have been seeing what I paint rather than painting what I see.
I am very attracted in my paintings to leaving the surface of objects for the surfaces of light. I have tried to join the surfaces of light with the essential lightness of surface, and in that surface I have painted. My surfaces have both form and unity - as a European artist very interested in the possibility of an American audience for my work, I believe that Form and Unity are especially significant.
That is, I would hope, that my paintings could serve as a bridge between the American and European cultures. I perceive an American simplicity of form and ease of expression that can give needed delineation and structure to a richer European background. The complexity of the European experience could gain greater impact through American form and shape. The power of the past in Europe, sometimes seen as extreme pessimism, would benefit from the optimism of a simpler American formulation. My art, produced in several European cultures, could become an undersea bridge leading to peace and accord between the two traditions.
I aim at a unity of form, so that my art can express the Form of Unity. Moving from the surfaces of my own childhood, I hope to reveal to a new audience a fertile universe in a new home.
La Garde Freinet, Provence - Vienna, Austria
Summer 1994