Full of humor, Caved 195x160cm 2007

Full of metaphor — Le retour de Gilles 195x160cm 2007

Dramatic — A scene of mutual slaughter, detail 270x320cm 2007

Gerard Garouste's solo exhibition "Burgundy, Family and Warm Water" is on view at Galerie Daniel Templon from January 12 to February 26. Gerard Garouste (born 1946) is the most representative artist of the French return to symbolism and mythology in the 1980s. All of his artistic creation has consistently revolved around Western civilization and cultural heritage, drawing inspiration from the great philosophical and literary texts of the West (the Bible, Rabelais, or Cervantes) to open up a distinctive painting style. It is worth noting that through his meticulous traditional oil painting technique, his oils stand apart from today's fast-food-like approach, making them exceptionally different.

History and mythology have always been the themes in his paintings. From his two most recent solo exhibitions, one discovers that he has shifted these overly weighty didactic textual narratives toward personal stories surrounding real life. Scenes of daily life replace remote historical settings, moving from past metaphysical concerns to anecdotes of personal real life, entering a witty personal world, shaped through narrative and literary black humor, playfulness, metaphor, and allegory.

This solo exhibition is titled "La Bourgogne, la famille et l'eau tiède" (Burgundy, Family and Warm Water), clearly taking the artist's birthplace region and family as the subject, with the clever addition of "warm water" seemingly carrying a metaphorical undertone. Gerard Garouste builds this exhibition on three dimensions of his life: the disappearance of the childhood paradise of Burgundy, the family hell, and the exploration of that impossible warm water — that is to say, a steady form or worldly wisdom.

Within the scope of his personal biography, Gerard Garouste questions the notion of subject matter in painting, exploring the myths of roots and transmission. Thus, in these twenty-odd paintings, there is an orderly presentation, without any sense of shame, of memory episodes indelibly inscribed in the artist's psyche — such as family secrets, childhood trauma, family disputes, and memories of madness. Amid humorous, witty, and playful figure variations and extraordinary interior scenes, a dramatic succession of human tragicomedies unfolds, one after another, interminable and caught between tears and laughter.

Figures full of associations and vividly rich colors construct the body of the paintings, conveying lyrical meaning and extraordinary metaphor through symbolic body language and object signs. The artist explains: "In the details of life, the entire society is in dysfunction. In this feeling, what I paint is precisely the predicament of the era I live in. The problem of the transmission of knowledge is crucial for me. As a child, I grew up amid the beautiful lies of the family and the hypocrisy of religion; this significant foolish education is what I have today. I must express, through images like textual proof, all these things that entangle me. What interests me is this notion of roots — even if roots are an ideal, they still await exploration of the truth."