Group show
Galerie Dominique Fiat
Dessins de 1982, réalisés à Taïf en Arabie Saoudite. J’avais 28 ans, la fougue de découvrir, traduire et rencontrer. Ces instants accrochés, sur le papier de mes plans, gardent leur force et ouvrent des portes sur mes créations d’aujourd’hui.
du samedi 5 au mercredi 23 décembre 2020
16 rue des Coutures Saint Gervais 75003 Paris
It was in 1982 on the site of prince Sultan Taïf’s palace, in Saudi Arabia, a plan which had been devised in Paris and London for Saudi Oger, Rafiq Hariri’s firm.
Everything began with a few sketches and a frame work which was already building up above the Mecca. We had a lot of meetings and hours of study then we raced against time to achieve the files of a huge building which, within a few weeks, was to become a Babel tower with numerous colours and languages.
We had imagined the spaces, planned the distances from the vast Lobby leading towards its stairs, from the Majlis to the dining-rooms, from the mosque to the private flats. Long-considered prospects, materials and progress which, little by little, were escaping us in their technical translations, decorative presentations and imposed requirements.
The creative energy of the beginnings was diluting itself in exchanges, the requests expressed in the settings of another age, nurtured everyday life and my imagination. A composer and an actor of a “reality opera”, I needed to attempt to catch time, to write down notes in order not to forget the impetus which sustained this experience. It initiated a series of drawings which were executed in the night, on my notebooks, when I was going all over the building site in the middle of Pakistani crouching around me. An automatic willingly uncertain writing arose, echoing the remembrances of the creative steps which were vanishing in their confrontation with the reality. Notes written down and expressions of useless and unseemly moments which today take on a particular flavour.
The years have passed, the Prince has become the King, Mister Rafiq Hariri was the President of Lebanon, what has this palace become ? I still have my sketches, they were the starting point of large-sized canvasses which were getting white as if they wanted to erase reality while yet keeping the substance of the ways, the memory of hitches and encounters.
“Reflection about Sponsorship” is the name of this series of canvasses-writings with micro-landscapes, graphics without any rule on the photographic reduction of my plans. Creations which today keep all their strength and are beautiful answers to technical virtuoso drawings of that time, most likely destroyedthrough time and which have become rather dull in comparison with the “computer-aided” creations, the smooth and dead images of our worldwide thinking machines.
The hands, the skills, the progression, the confidence and the dream…
Thierry Diers
Charosson, July 2018