Stéphane Zaech, a journey of ambiguity

Until October 16, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds is exhibiting the work of Vaudois artist Stéphane Zaech. More than a hundred canvases reveal a painting style that distorts the bodies of characters and the gaze of visitors, in a mischievous way.

At first glance, Stéphane Zaech's work is astonishing. At the second, too. But the astonishment is not the same. If at first it's the disarticulated silhouettes, the duplicated details and the disproportionate anatomy that are disorientating, what's then disconcerting is the overall harmony that emerges from these scenes. Nothing matches, yet everything seems in its place. This impression of ambiguous weirdness is reinforced by the eerily calm backgrounds, the icy landscapes where madness seems to lurk. But on closer inspection, there's nothing monstrous about these deformed creatures; on the contrary, they assume a zany, extravagant side, as if parading under a circus tent. By hijacking codes, Stéphane Zaech makes his paintings playful.

A free-spirited exhibition

The exhibition space devoted to Stéphane Zaech is immense. Canvases adorn two of the museum's three floors, and the scenographic itinerary takes visitors from intimate rooms to vast, light-filled galleries. With so much space at your disposal, you can enjoy a rare luxury: letting the paintings take over the space with their own universe, freely unfolding their narrative thread, without any compass. You don't just stroll past an exhibition, but truly enter a painter's world, and walk through it, accompanied by his curious characters.

Entering the exhibition at the Musée Chaux-de-Fonds means taking the time to immerse yourself in Stéphane Zaech's painting, and walking among the silhouettes until they become familiar; it means leaving it up to the visitor to construct his or her own artistic digression, without imposing any particular theme or itinerary.

Averting our gaze, questioning our relationship with the body

Stéphane Zaech urges us to go beyond the apparent strangeness of the scenes, to dare to cross the mysterious veil that disguises the space, to access our otherness. For, beyond the aesthetic experience of the visit, Stéphane Zaech's paintings question our relationship with the perfect body and our desire to constantly modify our physical appearance, slimming some forms, enlarging others, ultimately rendering it dysmorphic.

This retrospective of the Swiss painter's last ten years is an opportunity to discover an artist who plays with the classical canons of art, inviting us to look elsewhere for the obvious. Stéphane Zaech paints today's world with the techniques of the old masters, revealing a pictorial space-time where everything is at once familiar, enigmatic, poetic and magical, without losing its simplicity. And it's as facetious as it is striking.

Write to the author: quentin.perissinotto@leregardlibre.com

Photo credits: © Quentin Perissinotto for Le Regard Libre

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