CASORIA CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

Marina Gauthier-Dubédat

In a place whose name suggests the splendours of the Earth and the greatness of the Human Being, a new museum devoted to international contemporary art will rise thanks to the determination and the diligence of Casoria authorities and Naples International Contemporary Art Centre.

Artists and art lovers from France are pleased to welcome this start and wish it the best.

As if it was coming out of Charles Baudelaire, André Malraux or Elie Faure’s dreams, this Museum aims, in its heterogeneity, to be the reflect of the Art of our time throughout the world, in order to point out its universal, timeless and metaphysical essence. So, the vast and complete structure is made for knowledge, reflection and contemplation, divided in different activity’s sectors: a gallery presenting the continuous collection, another gallery for temporary exhibitions, a park with monumental sculptures, a lecture and projection room, a pedagogical laboratory, a multimedia area, a bookshop, studios and apartments for artists.

This “Ideal Museum”, looking so perfect that it seems difficult to figure it, will open its doors in 2008 to an eclectic, initiated or novice public, always sensitive and open-minded, eager for emotions and fine forms (plastic beauty). No doubt it will be attracted by all the plastic trends of our time: lyric or analytical abstractions; abstract or realistic expressionisms; dreamlike, pop, hyper realistic, surrealist or committed figurations; primitive art and more. It will also present all the materials used by the artists like painting, sculpture, photo, video, set up. Finally, it will enjoy researching cultural typologies, implicit, obvious or non-existent ones, to vary from case to case. And then discovering, through the forty nations represented, the common character of the thought and feelings of the being, beyond the frontiers of rationalism.

Following the example of its neighbours - antic, medieval or baroque cities like Pompeii, Herculaneum, Capri or Caserta -, the town of Casoria, bordering on Naples, goes on the march of civilisation with the beginning of a new chapter: the twenty-first century.

We would like here to congratulate Antonio Manfredi, Giosuè De Rosa, Giulio Russo, Pino Esposito and all the instigators of one of the most beautiful plan of our time. And we thank them for having invited France to take part in this great adventure.

Jacques Haramburu After having completed his studies (training) at the School of Decorative Arts, Fine Arts of Paris and Decorative Arts of Aubusson, Haramburu explores expressive forms. He uses different materials like painting, ceramic and tapestry. With a dynamic gestured  , doing dripping, he tears and treats roughly the surfaces. The emphasis is on the quality and the quantity of the material. He likes to cover the whole surface with an homogeneous coat. But sometimes, he prefers to divide the surface into two parts, creating an opposition between a calm atmosphere on one side and a battlefield on the other side. In that way, remembering automatic writing, he can rightly express mankind’s emotions, sensations and feelings.

After a stay in la Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, the artist decides (chooses) not to use colours anymore. By only using forms and black and white, he creates a restrained and mystical anguish, sometimes with soft and dragging plastic harmony, and a light touch, sometimes with violent and morbid forms, and paint’s impasto or spatters. Because of his references to physical and mental suffering and to the imminence of death, his work can be compared to the Spanish expressionism – especially Saura, Millares, Tàpies or Feito - more than to American productions.

The untitled two part work he exhibits in Casoria rightly expresses a plaintive serenity, calming and frightening at the same time, moving and fascinating like the allegro mezza voce of a concerto.

Odile Cariteau Deeply marked by one of the most primary and picturesque country of Africa where she spent her childhood and teenage years, Odile Cariteau is first interested by the various definitions of universal symbols, especially through oriental religions and philosophies. From those researches, at first sight scientific, she finds a purely spiritual progress she can naturally apply to her creation’s work. Then, the study of the Torah’s ancient Hebraic characters, based on the “anagogie” of the square, and later of the Tchan, Taï-Chi-Chuan and Chi Gong’s calligraphy, more free and complex at the same time, seems to be a way to penetrate the mystery of our Genesis and of the World’s understanding. This study influences too her plastic aspirations and her work’s compositions.

Mainly using the canvas as material, but also stone, brick, tile and ceramic, especially the raku, the artist lets spatters and informal blobs – often black and grey – run on the surface, so that their structure reminds us the elements of nature – the sky, the wind, the stars – and as well the reflections of the man in perpetual search of wisdom.

Following the example of Zao-Wou-Ki, Gao Xingjian or, near to us, Turner and Mathieu, Cariteau says something to us with an “ardent tact”, because on this side of linear, dreamlike and even expressionist dynamism, the oriental succulence of a perfect mastery of the artist’s brushwork is essential.

Marie-Françoise Rouy Having very early developed a true love of (a true passion for) plastic arts, music, literature and languages, Marie-Françoise Rouy’s personality is characterized by an authentic and enriching eclecticism which gives her works not only a necessary metaphysic profoundness but also a basically rigorous aesthetic, in her march towards the avant-garde.

That’s how Pi for example - ancestral Chinese symbols of the sky - is first in her imaginary and then realized in concrete, a material not very used in plastic creation but still able to generate numerous forms and textures. Those circles, so allegories of the divine, but also others geometrical figures, more or less classic and expressing the spiritual, have two sides. One is plane and refined, in which the artist introduces various pigments, gold leaf oriental calligraphies and a deliberate alternation of polished and bright surfaces and then rough and mat ones. The other is unpolished and uneven, reduced to a primary condition in order to give free rein to things’ duality: on the one hand, the elementary genesis; on the other hand, the progress toward the perfection.

In the work of Marie-Françoise Rouy, all the philosophies seem to fit together in an harmonious and pertinent syncretism. In the same way, her expressionist manner, either lyrical or material-related, fits the extreme-oriental plastic and creates that way an exhaustive as well as an original art.

Pierre Gauthier-Dubédat After having completed brilliant studies at the National Art School in Paris, and then learned copperplate engraving in Johnny Friedlaender’s studio, Pierre Gauthier-Dubédat went in for creating in a spiritual as well as an aesthetic manner. Following the example of Socrate in search of Beauty, he knows that harmony alone leads to the absolute. Child of the twentieth century, this artist dominates the incessant metamorphosis of the avant-garde so much so that its richness and complexity feed him and drive him to create an unique language, at the same time pioneer and completely rooted in his generation, penetrating in this way the protean universality and timelessness of the History of Art.

His first works, violent and dark (or gloomy), lead the spectator, in spite of himself, to a universe reminding Goya, where simple conversations, bucolic walks or lovers’ meetings become unusual circular choreographies, carrying away the entire scene in a more or less accentuated rotation.

As the years go by, the characters fade, then completely disappear, leaving the space and the action to the Nature, sometimes hostile and frightening, sometimes kind and welcoming. This nature is dreamt or directly inspired by the travels the artist made throughout the world. Therefore, it penetrates our perception and rebuild our universe. So, actors and aesthetes at the same time, we pass through the numerous doors, propylaea, arches, narrow passages between two cliffs or in the middle of a thick wood, which predominate in his compositions. We are inevitably attracted by this “other side”, full of hope and emotional wonders, reminding Dante’s paradise. And then we contemplate the world, perched on plateaus opened on the infinite and the moods of the sky.

Basically lyric, the painting of Pierre Gauthier-Dubédat wants to express as rightly as possible the feelings and the reflections of the man in his search of truth through the constant and unlimited discovery of the elements surrounding him. And then, his painting enriches, with its undeniable quality, the Parisian tendency the artist has many things in common with, besides Vieira Da Silva, Soulages, Atlan, De Staël…

Paris, March 2005