By Jano Xhenseval

Zodiaque Review No. 1, La-Pierre-qui-Vire, 1998

It is a placement in high places of the unpredictable. The setting of the invisible.

It is a time in between, a lapse, an interval, a final summons where what happens is received, incarnates, and teaches the world. Perhaps it is here that the painter wove his canvas, on the lookout for the dawn.

How to look at a painting? How to let the soul rest in this preference? Open it to the sign, to the index for a moment? There is no rule for looking, but how to invite the other to this approach? It is the opening that attests to the authenticity of the encounter, that gives it its legitimacy... and to do so, one needs the agreement of the colors... and the disposition of the heart. Must one speak to show?

It may be that we approach painting through discursive, anecdotal paths, but any comment too external to the work risks locking us into arbitrariness and the docile narrative explanation.

There is a more rebellious but more available way to approach the work of art, the direct path of emotions. How to be of service to the work? I mean listening. Of course, by offering mediation between the viewer and the viewed (who is not always the one we think!). But also by respecting the distance, the silence of the encounter.

- Looking together has something musical about it, through the height and depth of the sounds perceived, through the movement of emotions.

- Looking in unison leaves each one with their own questioning, their solitude, while offering a fraternal comfort and a space of reception where the work and its interpretation are remade.

- Looking together, it seems to me that it is only in this position that one can welcome the work of art in detachment, that is, in clairvoyance. ("Together" also means in solitude nourished by the abundance of shared fruits). Looking at a work is also a test, one that will brush against all dangers, expose our questioning and their dangerous tremors, these failures that open up the mystery of art and propel us to the heart of communion.

The gaze can pass very quickly, like a caress, or linger to get lost, it will never return unscathed, it will have some "story" to tell, some legends to carry to others, some concerns to transmit.

It will have to destroy what it thought it saw, because it knew how to name it, in order to enter the hidden, the invisible, and guide us, in a sense, into a new quest.

There is no rule for looking, nothing but the freedom of the eyelid to go back and forth and bring the flow of novelty to the eye, to drown our certainties and moisten our beginnings. It may be that the encounter happens later, in the darkness, and this is also how a new reading is invented, the desire to see again, to taste again, to join others, to be a seeker and co-author in time.

There is no shared moment in contemplation that does not give the work its origin, its meaning, its radiance. And if there are misunderstood spaces? It doesn't matter not to understand. In front of a painting, we understand nothing, we don't even know why we are here. What is proposed is not an experience in the usual sense, but rather a free walk that distills air and happiness without knowing.
The world will need my eyes to redo its colors, my soul to detach from it.