Talitha Kum @ Eva Hober – Paris

I’m not entirely sure about Axel Pahlavi‘s level of religiousness, a recurrent theme for this master of unmasked angels, martyrs & saints who tend to take regular trips to hell for some cosmetic advice. His new exhibition @ Eva Hober starts tomorrow with much more of what you know, yet holier.

 You enter Axel Pahlavi ‘s art the same way you would “enter the Church”; by accepting that a force that is impossible to name will guide you into a narrative, and take you by the hand to tell you a story of painting. For the artist, all creation is a matter of transformation, but also a matter of relation to the other, to the one who is willing to watch. Let us watch then…

The exhibition is like a journey into a thought that is gradually embodied, and from painting to painting, you have to follow the restrained strength of the staged gestures: from the strangeness of a bandaged hand with a forming drop of blood, to the simplicity of a modest hand gently concealing genitals left in the shadow, a choreography of smoothness is implemented. The painter takes up the themes of the female clown, and echoes a former painting (Love Stronger than Death, 2010); but here the red nose has fallen off, and the face covered in white is raised, open, turned towards something other than itself, and standing on something that is beyond melancholy. Standing close by, the body of the woman is still there, naked, and in a position of eternal waiting. The vertical canvas soars up towards a peak that could be a sky. The painting’s only backdrop is a big creased drape, and its bareness, that is also fullness, moves deeply.

It looks like in this new exhibition Axel is asking for forgiveness, at least he’s more purified than ever before, maybe even more inspired than ever before. A voyage through the secret moments in the life of Mary, Jesus or  Archangel Gabriel; hard to conceive modern imagery without his contributions, the Church should pay attention for an urgent update.

A voyage that opens for exactly a month and that won’t give you nightmares, it ends with with a lovely fusion of innocence, art, nature and mystery, seems like a first for him. More info this way.