POINT OF VIEW
Legacy of Sensationism
“NOTHING HOLDS ME BACK, I attach myself to nothing, I belong to nothing,
All the sensations take hold of me but none stay.
I am more varied than a multitude of chance,
I am more diverse than a spontaneous universe,
All eras belong to me for a moment,
All souls have found their place in me for a moment.
Fluid of intuitions, river of suppositions – but,
Always successive waves,
Always the sea – no longer recognizing itself
Always separating from the river, indefinitely.
Fernando Pessoa.
By borrowing a verse from Fernando Pessoa to give a title to his exhibition, Joseph Dadoune invites us to place his artistic approach in that of the sensationalism, a literary movement created by the Portuguese poet.
According to Pessoa:
Art, in short, is the harmonious expression of our awareness of our sensations, in other words our sensations must be expressed in such a way that they create an object that will become a sensation for others.. [1]
In other words, the poem is the object that mediates the sensation from the author to that of the reader. This desire to convey sensation into the text, to put a part of life into writing, is also observed in the work of Joseph Dadoune.
From the outset, the vigor and dynamism of the lines in the series "Flowers/Camouflages, Periphery" (2023) give body to plants. The latter, blackened with charcoal, seem petrified, even charred, giving more the impression of a dead body than of vigorous undergrowth.
The vegetation in "Nocturnal Nostalgia" (2024) emerges from the darkness. Their almost ghostly presence provokes both delight and strangeness. Faced with them, our perception is put to the test. The superposition of the planes causes the plant elements to intermingle, giving them a spectral dimension.
Conversely, the radiant light emanating from the "Gold Box inside a square" (2024) warms our senses. The abstract radicalism of these paintings and the symbolism of their gold color endow them with an almost mystical dimension. In this, they are not unrelated to the icôRussian nes. And at the same time, their material quality gives them a sensitivity that Suprematist paintings too often lack.
The use of the symbolic dimension of color is also present in all the vermillion and garnet red paintings. In the thickness of the material appear plant stems that oscillate between rose thorns and those of wire. The supposed delicacy of the flower, here described as "The Voracious Flower" (2023), is undermined in favor of a threatening, even carnivorous version. According to a very gendered interpretation, the flower is readily associated with femininity, which could lead us to see in these flower-woman bodies, an almost warlike intention. For if red can evoke blood, it is also here a symbol of resistance. This glowing body, even wounded, is a living body. These paintings thus fit into Fernando Pessoa's desire to make the poem a living being, a carnal, corporeal object.
Finally, the collection "Born from Ashes, Born from the Sun" (2024), from the "Tar" series initiated by Joseph Dadoune in 2013, takes us back to the charred flowers of the entrance. Here, unlike the first, they evoke nature's prodigious capacity for resilience - that which rises from the ashes. From the depths of the thick tar paste, flowers emerge here and there that call out to us: "you", "me", thus proclaiming their powerful desire for existence.
Faces slip among them, which the artist calls "eternal masks," referring to Fernando Pessoa's desire to make the poem "a person, a living human being."[2], even if in Joseph Dadoune the living body is both vegetable and human.
From "Eternal Masks" to "Nocturnal Nostalgia" and "Flowers/Camouflages, Periphery," the sensations mediated by these images are permanently inscribed in the work. They guarantee that the artist's sensations remain very much alive throughout the work.
Tomorrow all these words in which I love you
Will be alive, you dead
Body, you were alive to no longer be
So beautiful ! Only these verses remain [3]
Elodie Antoine, art critic
Paris, February 2025
[1] Letter from Fernando Pessoa to José Blanco, quoted in BLANCO, José, Pessoa himself, letters and documents, Vesoul, The Difference, 1986, p. 189.
[2] Pessoa cited in BLANCO, 1986, p. 190.
[3] Fernando Pessoa, Pagan Poems, Paris, Christian Bourgois, 1989, p. 277.