EN | Sébastien Frère

Memory

Jessica — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 11:03:54 +0000

Memory and imagination are strange things. My last large format work on canvas was initially inspired by the memory of a deep abyss in which I fished as a child. I wanted to show the reflections of the rocks, the foliage and, above all, the sky in the dark water. Once I had incorporated them, these celestial reflections took precedence over the initial project, flooding it with the shimmer of a marine light that I had contemplated the day before. The original image had been replaced, mentally and then physically, by the fresh memory of the most recent image, but still leaving the first composition visible.
And sometimes a drawing changes and evolves depending on the tool or the moment. So, this woman is given a crest and a beak, or these stones take on human forms.
Identical leaps take me into different stylistic registers, sometimes in the same day.
If there is just one thing that unites them, it is texture. This is the case for works on canvas where the surfaces are woven and often treated with superimposed glazings, but it is even more evident when images are transferred to paper. Their impression depends on the density of the paint applied, the quality of the support and the direction or force of the gesture. This gives rise to swirls, clouds and natural-looking backgrounds that act as a counterpoint to a simplified drawing, and in the best cases, create a definitive harmony.
This search for immediacy reminds me of something said by Germain Bonel*, a warm man and a great instinctive painter: Ah…! Making a successful work out of a sketch in one go!
I am also reminded of the title of a text that the poet Max Rouquette* wrote for the presentation of an exhibition by his friend Henri Frère*, namely A mon seul désir. The motto of the Lady of the Unicorn, which I am happy to adopt.

Sorède, July 2022

*Germain Bonel, Catalan painter,1913-2002
*Max Rouquette, Occitan writer,1908-2005
*Henri Frère, sculptor and painter, father of Sébastien,1908-1986

A venerable catalpa

Jessica — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 15:01:50 +0000

A venerable catalpa, a natural sculpture with long, slender and fascinating winding branches, no longer shades the small terrace of Moli d’en Cassanyes. It overhangs the pool formed by the waters running down from a brook that has its source in the Albères in Roussillon. The mill has been idle for many years. The wheel is home to a charming cave-dweller. This small Catalan king rules over his realm. A ripple on the blue-green water signals a snake, dizzy with sun, in search of shade. Wind stirs up the branches of two monumental plane trees planted two hundred years ago.

This is where Sébastien Frère lives and works. A place crowded with memories. When one is the son of Henri Frère, a close friend of Maillol, one is not alone. I imagine the two sculptors strolling under the foliage, through the acanthus, in this free and natural garden, home to Earth gods. Perhaps here was born the desire to illustrate Virgil. And the strong presence of the mother of Sébastien is also witness to the memory of the poet Joseph Sébastien Pons, her father, for whom the grandson is named. Here, Sébastien goes back to his Catalan roots and his name: Sebastià. Here are the sources, the pollen, that enrich the Catalan body and soul. These roots nourish the tree.

This man, an artist, puts his tools to good use: his vision and his manual skills. Pottery first, which he practiced for fifteen years. I know other painters who have worked with clay. They carry the scars, recalling the Stone Age and when man first discovered fire. Sébastien Frère is one of them. I can see in his painting traces of much older crafts: imprints, carvings, engravings, layers, moving colors. Everything is symbolic. We have no need to know whether his vision dictates the way his hand moves, or how or why it produces scumbles, scratches, erasures or transparencies. No, the painting is not by chance, but by a man who has learned from experience, and who invents.

Criticism is not my field. When I see a work of art, I remain silent. I can feel it, and absorb it better that way. To express my feelings would be to invalidate them. It is useless to come back to the same old question: abstract or figurative? Since the Fauves and the cubists we are aware that the subject does not make the painting. The work itself is the only thing that counts – not the apple or the Mont Sainte Victoire.

A final word: Sébastien Frère, ceramist, fire-master, has the gift of cooking food. His dishes are edible works of art. Here again, we find a special Catalan talent, a knowledge that is embedded in racial memory. A good eye, a sense of smell, a sharp ear, taste, technique – these five senses are in action, in this country of epicures where the highest art is to live well.

Frédéric Jacques Temple
from the exhibition Aigües, 2008
Traduction Pamela Knight

Signs

Jessica — Tue, 09 May 2023 14:59:12 +0000

Neither figurative nor abstract, the paintings of Sébastien Frère should be seen as a wide, rich experience that shows a range of feeling drawn from the disciplines that he has made his own during his career. His sure hand, a gift from calligraphy, the large shapes with different brushes, the discreet colors, a technique learned from ceramics and other hands-on work, starting with print-making. Sébastien Frère produces work that absorbs all this expertise, illuminating the world of signs. The motif, the myth, the story are all there in visible signals. All that is left is the dynamism, the basic energy, the essence of the image. The big canvases of the Signes exhibition, presented by the Centre d’Études Catalanes Paris-Sorbonne – Solide, Bride and Orient Express – are splendid examples of this feeling and dynamism that are integral components of the artist’s work. These paintings recall a familiar story, described in two or three ideograms, à la chinoise. The title of Orient Express tells us so. Signs that move from the personal to the universal are interconnected by the combination of the characters and their place in the whole. Let us not forget the meshing of luminosity, opening up the color, softening and blending it into the painting. Creating the ellipse, a door is opened to a mythic and poetic world where, in just a few brush strokes, the light, the values, the material effects and especially space are the central elements of the composition and the modeling of its meaning.
If at first glance the work seems to be composed of multiple referents, leading to a mysterious vision of stylized reality, further study shows it to be completely original with a very strong sense of its own truth. Completely aware of its own life force, the work sends out a signal – the sign of absolute strength, intimately universal and irrevocably personal.

Eric Forcada
Traduction Pamela Knight

Such an old catalpa tree

Jessica — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:57:07 +0000

Such an old catalpa tree, sculpted by Nature in long, thin and fascinating snake like branches; its shade ceased to refresh the tiny terrace of the Molí d’en Cassanyes a long time ago.

The tree overlooks a pond, created thanks to a dam across a brook running down from the Albères mountains. The mill stopped working ages ago. A sweet little bird has built its nest within its gate : a real kingdom for this “rei menut”*

An slithering grass snake, dizzy from the sun, seeking a secret shadow, leaves a trail in the muddy waters, The branches of two giant plane trees that took root two hundred years ago wave frantically in the wind….. Among all this, lives and works Sébastien Frère…..

A place steeped in history : It is not possible to grow up innocently when you are Henri Frère’s son, a man who was so close to Aristide Maillol. I can almost see the two sculptors in the middle of this large, wild garden haunted by telluric deities, strolling under the foliage, among the acanthus, perhaps building a scheme for Virgile’s illustration…. By her very presence, Raphaëlle, Sébastien’s mother, brings forth the memory of her father, the poet Josep Sebastià Pons who bequeathed his forename to his grandson : Here specifically, Sebastià replaces Sébastien…

Enough said about the origins, the seeds, food for body and soul. Catalunya is the anchor and the roots are what gives the tree its foliage…

What was left to the former artist, was to make good use of whatever Nature provided to use as principal, complimentary tools, his eyes and his hands.

Frère was firstly a ceramist for over 15 years. I met a few of those painters whose hand dabbled a while with clay. As a neolithic sign handed down by those who first knew how to create fire. Sébastien Frère has received such a sign.

I can see in his art the reminiscence of the oldest craftwork : prints, engravings, embossings, scrapings, coatings, evolving colours. Everything is a sign and who cares about knowing which, how and why… the eye orders the hand to brush, smear, erase and create those transparences.

These paintings are not made by chance but by a man whose path is rich with experience and who continues to create.

I never felt comfortable when criticizing and would rather remain silent when looking at a work of art. For me, this is the only way to feel and understand it at its best. An emotion or a feeling may be damaged when expressed in words.

In any case, whether it is representational art or not is no longer the question. We all know that, since the Fauves and the Cubists, a subject does not make the painting and what is shown is what matters, whether it be an apple or the Sainte Victoire**. The paint itself becomes its own subject.

One final word : Frère, the ceramist and master of fire, is also an artist in the kitchen ; whatever he cooks resembles an edible painting. This again shows a real know-how, a genuine and deeply rooted Catalonian gift : all five senses operate in this country where mere living is a treat.

Frédéric Jacques Temple

* rei menut : small king
** relates to Cézanne favourites

A motionless convulsion

Jessica — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:51:41 +0000

A motionless theatre for the mind, which movements are wavering between characters and signs, between script and ideas, signs turning into a movement, hold and petrified in the very action of their birth, playing a fictional part, forever poised between balance and unbalance, between movement and pause, straining from a disappearing reality and from the dizzy presence of a potential truth . Key-signs, dressed in black, forged to unlock our dreams, rusted per their long wait in our memories . Everything remains here, between action and rest in a motionless flow. Movement has left a mobile print everywhere, like the signature of someone moving throughout stillness. A fleeting moment becomes a monument. Movements are caught as they pass away, not yet at rest, never at rest anyway. The eye which has been unceasingly reading through this forest of signs, stops for a moment. Fed from all these feelings spread on canvas, a motionless parabola grows inside our soul, releasing this unlimited faith in a common world.

Sébastien Frère, Transparencies
Bernard Combeaud, Paris-Bordeaux
September 30, 2005

Motionless upheaval

Jessica — Mon, 09 May 2005 15:00:41 +0000

A motionless mental picture in which movements take place, and give out signals, hovering between explanation and idea, gestures that are frozen at the very instant they are made – they shape an imaginary scene that is caught forever between balance and imbalance, between movement and immobility, the tension caused by the juxtaposition of an ephemeral presence and the dizzying sight of what can be imagined.
Key signs, dressed in black, stand ready to open the doors of dreams that the passage of time has rusted in our memories. Everything here lies between movement and rest, motionless tides. Kinetic art has left its trace everywhere – the sign of a transient presence in an unchanging scene, the marker of a fleeting instant. Movements are caught at the moment they cease to exist, and are not yet, and never will be at rest. The different paths that the eye follows in this forest of symbols hold still for a moment. From the synergy released in the canvas a reposeful parabola forms, leading us to the infinite hope of a common world.

Bernard Combeaud
excepted from Transparences, 2005
Traduction Pamela Knight