Valérie Thévenot

Les filets d’Isis sauvaient et recueillaient les précieux fragments du corps de son aimé. Isis avait fait de ses propres cheveux des instruments de sauvetage… Elle relevait les filets de sa chevelure.Elle sauvait de la perdition, de la dispersion les morceaux du corps de son aimé livrés aux infortunes. Et nous que voulons nous sauver ? V.T.

Par un fourmillement de traits l’inextricable lutte pour qu’apparaisse un portrait de l’humain. Je cherche l’universel portrait, un seul portrait pour dire l’humain comme un concept. J’interroge l’émergence des formes, des lignes qui deviennent signifiant presque par distraction, par automatisme, par l’absence de volonté…

C’est un petit carré, un petit carré jaune. Tout ce qu’il y a de plus carré et de plus jaune. Et pourtant, je ne vois jamais la même chose. Au-delà des effets rétiniens, le phénomène interroge le regard. Qu’est-ce que regarder ?

...Le point sombre est une trouée sans fond, une porte intérieure. Un choix se présente, rester au bord ou plonger dans l’aventure de l’inconnu en quête d’une vérité qui se dérobe ? Le point est une percée, lieu mythique et archétypal et pourtant concret. Comment chercher à « percer le mystère » de ce nombril autour duquel toutes les formes s’organisent ? ...

Valérie THÉVENOT, visual artist (studio diary)
"PHOSPHENES, ephemeral visions"
If any glance seeks to nourish its imagination, its dreams, its inner world..., the phosphenes open a window on multiple luminous sensations: gushing, glittering, aspiring and fleeting.
What remains is the touch of sensation, the trace of this impulse towards the unknown, the material in which the desire to escape from oneself is printed in relief.
The creation is incarnated to share together the most authentic part of ourselves, to secretly celebrate the most intimate of each other.
The phosphenes invite to interior travels through the overseas worlds...
Expression of the inner vision
Throughout my successive research, it is always a world of echoed color materials. The material reflects the influence in observing Nature and questioning Metaphysics. The spot, a so attractive source that is able to absorb us... We don’t understand through our eyes what we see, we are captured.
What do we see beyond the material?...
Passage through the center
The beginning spot is from where the genesis of the creation was born and thereafter the light, the colors, the vibrations, the energy, the sound, the space, the time...
In my own night, searching for this light captured between black and white, through a range of colors declined in purples and blues, a place almost free of forms that tends to the essential. The recurring pattern is the wave which is organized around the dark spot. The organic (non-geometric) circle looks like an eye and invites to a meditative contemplation.
This spot, central and black, is above all as a gap in the material, an entrance. The texture holds the very first place in my researches. It reflects the relationship to life and a poetic orientation, the aim is to free oneself from the line, from the outline of the shape that encloses, limits, separates... Not being subordinated to any outline or any boundaries.
The spot is of prodigious energy, its undescribed mystery...
Middle, fixed spot
The fascination for the spot as a center is amazing.
Fixing the middle of the spot is almost unbearable, I expose myself to disintegration ... With resistance, I’m straightening... The central spot acts like a magnet, it attracts me beyond the dark threshold. I’m integrating myself inside.
The point burns the forms ... I rush to it.
The central spot is like a sea monster who swallows the hero and spits him out on the beach. I let myself be caught without any resistance... The emptiness opens.
The fixed spot is dense, it is center of gravity, the outsides float around... I can’t stand staring at the spot, separated from the luminous and energizing circumference...
Intuitive experimentation of the "focal spot"
If concentrating on the focal spot results in a meditative state, my eye, after a few hours of work, no longer perceives the image but the lightning vibrations of energy. Where am I ? In the middle of myself ? Is that an intuitive apprehension of Unity?
The tournaments stop, everything stops...
Search for the authentic perception of the Unit
The spot is a crossing point where everything can be perceived by other senses than normal perception. For this, I have to find the rightness in the texture : the place, the size of the focal spot related to the whole image and its surroundings (the colors and their value, the wavy lines, the lights ...).
I split up, I’m creating a picture and at the same time, I’m led to almost cosmic sensations. I can’t imagine the depth and vastness of this space.
What does our viewpoint become the soundboard of ?
Where do the energy vibrations that activate the central spot come from ?
What is the source that illuminate our inner central spot ?
Mirror spot
The viewpoint is a reflection facing the spot mirror. The image is reflecting to infinity... Everyone is identified by what one’s looking at.
The center is focusing me, the fixed spot stares at me, the target spot is targeting me... the question mark is questioning me, the point of view is watching me, the fall is pushing me off, the getaway is running away from me... And what about the melting point ?...
Source spot
The spot in my creations materializes the reverberation of an essential spot echoeing on waveforms that sometimes emerge and sometimes dissolve. The spot is the alpha and omega ... either root and seed.
The eye impact
The eye is irresistibly attracted by the focal spot. This centripetal need causes eye strain. The eye is calm at the source of the spot. The spot has its own rhythm, expanding or retracting itself... I'm looking for the right size of the spot, stumbling around because my perception changes from one day to another. Finally, I prefer it to be smaller compared with the global form. The perception of the scale depends on the size of the spot. The fluctuating colored waves are organized around the focal spot. The concentric forms open and close the area, get in contact with the spot and become part of it. The blue and violet waves are iridescent, some areas change color depending on the point of view. The spot is precise, stable, frozen while the shapes are confused, floating, changeable. These two opposite sides combine to create a whole unit which I would like to be measured and radical at the same time...
Door Point
The dark spot is a bottomless gap, an inside door. There’s a choice to make : stay on the edge or dive into the adventure of the Unknown in search of an escaping truth ? The spot is a breakthrough, mythical and archetypal place but concrete however. How to "solve the mystery" of this structure around which all the shapes are organized ? The spot drills the material surface and shows an original place which contains everything and where opposites do not exist. The point is a "Black hole" that irresistibly attracts and consumes anyone who’d venture into watching it. If the spot is able to astound anyone, it invites to an inner experience. Like the archer becomes the center of the target, the one who’s watching becomes the spot itself...
From cyan to purple
From Turquoises, blues, purples is emerging a spatial sensation. Turquoise, for the Egyptians, allowed to see beyond time... Space disappears and forms almost an abyss. The black central spot is like darkness before and after a show, between the two is an ephemeral journey. The eye recognizes an original phenomenon and the consciousness aspires to the absolute. What does it mean to see ? The pictures show an inner but unknown world... Finally, there is nothing to see, everything is to be felt. There is nothing to understand but to know...
Luminescent effects
May darkness be an invisible light ?
If to be seen, the light must meet a resistance (the cloudy layer, as Goethe used to call it), then you’ll see it in a background of darkness. Darkness is in the shadow of the immensity of space. The perception of space is possible through the light or dark polarity.
Darkness and lightness are the same. The forms are dissolving...
But beyond the technical light appears a new one, from another nature... and this transcends my eyes.
Concentric forms that are almost hypnotic
Making visible the invisible, revealing the similarities between the external world and the inner man. Beyond the questions of plastic arts, I'm looking for a curing energy...
What is the nature of the forces that structure the forms ?
The forms radiate a charge. The intertwined formal structures echo and float. While staring at the picture I’m working on, I let things go, abandoning myself. I can’t move any longer, I can no longer hear the music in the studio.
The contemplative trip needs a concentration effort (like an orthoptie exercise) and a letting go, everyone has to find one’s own balance between attention and abandonment…
Forms bring me in another world, teleport me… but after a while you have to go out of there… come back, find the exit…