ExLibris VV

Mihail Chemiakine

1979

Takeishi Gallery

Tokyo




Instinct and Metaphysics

Chemiakiln is one of those painters- there ore no more than two or three per generation who go directly to the fable: they dazzle us with the brightness of their colours and the enchantment of their shapes so that, we forget to ask ourselves whether they are also thinkers. The case of Chemiakin is special: nothing of what he offers us claims the right to stick to reality to the extent of depriving itself of the legendary or lyrical dimension. The seduction is not for him a matter of recognition of places or objects and even less of faces or attitudes. It is compulsory that he transport us also to a realm where we have never completely penetrated before, even it we believe we can identify a few landmarks. If it happens that a clown's masque appears as such to us or should we bestow a look on a bottle, or else should some apple attract us, we may be certain, little by little, that this clown is not terrestrial, nor the bottle tangible, nor the apple born on an apple tree: they are inhabited by a mystery or more simply by an oneiric dimension which tends to redefine them. Is it a quiet magic that presides over this transmutation? I rather feel that there is, in addition, the duty well considered of the creator to rethink, according to his irrational needs, every phenomenon as soon as one intends through honesty and ambition to recreate it.

This is not an operation contrary to instinct: the thirst for the absolute or the metaphysical dictates a behaviour which goes beyond charm, however intense at first sight.

Alain Bosquet
(Le Monde)




Metaphysical Composition I

Metaphysical Composition VI

Metaphysical Head I

Metaphysical Head II