'Devenir' 'Becoming'


ESCA, Milhaud.
This text, publicized in 'Papiers Libres', isn't translated totally yet. . You can  read it in French or Dutch. 
All 'becoming' has a contingent origin, it depends on the circumstances. The history of becoming is full of relations with the not-becoming. To understand the became it isn't enough to enumerate its properties and actual circumstances, but you will also have to reckon with all attached to its coming into being; with the not-became. 
In this exhibition I show a construction of 46 paintings. It is called 'Abris' The paintings used as 'bricks' form three volumes. The painted side is turned to the inside. On different places you find openings in the construction and by some of them you can enter. That needs a certain effort, you will have to bow or to lie down. The construction isn't well thought, it is more the result of a hasty improvisation. And also, one isn't really protected in this abris. All is fragile, there are too many and too big openings. The 'became' proposed by the artist is a precarious one. In the process of 'becoming' you need protection, but it can only be unstable and open to the outside world, if you want the 'becoming' to be possible at all.

Besides 'Abris' you found drawings of other propositions in the show, enlarged computer drawings on the walls, a computer with an animation of several propositions and the execution of the classic possibility.

In this 'classic' part I showed framed paintings on the ground and their c.v. framed on the wall. This c.v., the paintings history as it is stocked in the computer,  is very important. It tells as much about a painting as its physical appearance. The same way as the history of a person is as important as his looking's.

I call my paintings chaotic. I paint with acrylics layer on layer. All is possible while painting. In the end the painting has a quality of infinity, and in time (I could continue to paint without changing its essence) and in space (the essence isn't changed by putting them together, nor by a microscopic enlargement).

June 1995.

(partial translation of text publicized in Papiers Libres no. 2, edition ESCA. See also Lise Ott: Annie Abrahams, l'utopie d'une vérité affective.)