“LAURE CARRÉ, JAB”

"After those that formerly took place in New York and Tokyo or those that, more recently, she regularly presents in Paris and Nantes, the latest of Laure Carré's exhibitions bears a title that undoubtedly calls for a brief word of explanation. “Jab” is the English term by which, in the vocabulary of boxing, we designate the blow – less powerful but faster – that we carry with the most advanced of our two fists. we call “ring” – which means: “ring” – the space around which the spectators make a circle, on which the fighters compete but which presents a strictly quadrangular shape that is framed by ropes.A rectangle or a square like the square or the rectangle of the paintings that Laure Carré paints. For her, the canvas is a carpet that no one goes to and on which silhouettes seem to levitate. They float in the void from which they detach themselves to the point that they seem to emancipate themselves carelessly of the background on which they appear. Dark like wonderfully elegant shadows to which blue and red give extraordinary colors. Alone or in pairs, couples in which each of the two bodies reflects the other, which it opposes and completes. They look like dancers, of course. Angels too. Of a sex that is sometimes uncertain and who, descended from the sky, visit the living. As in an Italian Annunciation before Raphael. But, after all, there are archangels who, messengers of a truth that comes to them from God – or from what takes its place – are also warriors. There is nothing flatly realistic – we understand – in the representation offered by the art of Laure Carré. One thinks rather of the scenes of fistfights carried on their sides by the panathenaic amphorae of ancient Greece. A whole story exists that links painting to boxing. Artpress, a few years ago, in a special issue, reported on this (1). In this very old and sumptuous tradition that they revive in their own way, the images that Laure Carré presents today take their place without in any way demerit from those that had preceded."

Philippe Forest

To read directly on the art press website, click here.