I am reminded of Paul Valery who, observing Degas’ prima ballerinas, marvelled at their profound connection with jellyfish, with that floating, suspended way of moving that belongs as much to the sea as it does to dance. To leap from the world of the stage to that of the abyss was an act of imagination, but a legitimate one. And before this work, we make that leap again, almost instinctively. In this web of red and green filaments, lit by a glow that seems to cut through the darkness of the deep sea, we find ourselves beyond any simple aquatic reality: we are in the abyss, where form and light dissolve into a single breath. Beneath the surface, in fact, colour behaves differently than in air: it spreads, breaks apart, fractures into drifting halos. Light, slowed by the density of water, stretches contours, makes lines tremble, turns every particle into a luminous thread. Forms are no longer fixed: they waver, refract, multiply, as if each detail were flowing through a space in which vision itself becomes fluid. And here, this suspension finds an echo in the distant spectacle observed from Mount Faito: a height from which everything seems to detach, where every light drifts in the air like an uncertain, almost aquatic trace. The mountain offers the same impression of motionless depth as the seabed; the gaze hangs suspended there like a diver in the water.Napex 241071

Sylvain Bellenger