We knew him primarily for his music, which is shrouded in rock poetry. We knew he was equally passionate about painting, photography and writing. Now we discover that he is a poet of the city, a seeker of light in the asphalt of New York avenues. Follow the lineis the route he invites us to take through the pages of a beautiful book devoted to some of his works, to be published on October 14. Follow the line, a journey through New York using signs, lines and curves, a reinvented urban territory, a labyrinth that challenges our cosmogony of intimacy.
CharlElie, Yellow line - 37 th street, 2007, photographie.
CharlElie, Yellow line - 37 th street, 2007, photographie.
Getting rid of what you’ve acquired to eventually bring out something of yourself that you don’t know… That’s what being an artist means to CharlElie Couture. In a way, it’s throwing yourself into the void. Regardless of the medium. For him, there is no opposition between music and the visual arts. On the contrary, their very close interweaving is part of the continuity of his work. Already, at the Beaux-Arts de Nancy, under the impetus of a teacher – Michel Paré – who advocated trans-disciplinarity, CharlElie Couture’s creation covered several fields of exploration. I’ve always thrown myself into art with naivety and enthusiasm, and with the feeling that I had to do it,” he confides. He already knew how to listen to the source, and follow the signs that emerge from himself. I’ve done things without telling myself what they’re for or why I’m doing them. In other words, what counts is the impact of a work.
If a book is only an appetizer, if there is always a world between the reproductions and the works, it nonetheless sheds light on the twenty-five-year career of a visual artist who has taken the paths of photography, painting and drawing, and worked on a multitude of media such as packaging cardboard, sewn canvas or shower curtains.. This is the first book to show a cohesion between the different stages of my career. An artist’s career, driven by a reflection on memory, where his plastic research now focuses on the theme of “re-construction”, has led him to definitively adopt the city as a poetic territory.
New York. Why this metropolis? It’s the center of the world as I know it,” says CharlElie Couture, 192 nationalities, 140 communities. You change streets, you change continents. This organization of the city around work, where you’re judged on what you do, appeals to me. In New York, there’s a feeling that many things are possible, and I’m one of those who are stimulated by the possible. New York as a territory of the possible, but also as a challenge of the intimate. In 2004, when CharlElie Couture left Paris for New York, it was a way for him to turn the page, but also to risk a change of scale and perception of things, as art critic and curator Philippe Cyroulnik writes in his critical notes on the works in Follow the Line.
CharlElie, Fifthave white line
Weaving the fabric of our lives around a city means deciphering its signs. Making them your own, the better to give them to others to read. Signs are the first urban paintings,” explains the artist, “ they define the codes of life. This raises the question of the individual’s relationship with his surroundings. Fascinated by urban signage and its by-products, Charlélie Couture’s questions range from the Kabbalah to the present day, offering a choreography of the city.
New York and Follow the line. Following these white lines in the night, photo after photo, sometimes enhanced by light, sometimes broken, sometimes curved and curved, sometimes in the shadows of skyscrapers, in the vertigo of dead ends, in tagged hieroglyphs, in the swaying gait of a passer-by. We invent our own path through a city that becomes our own, and suddenly realize that we’re not so far from the American dream. And yet… As CharlElie Couture explains, In Paris, going from one street to the next means including an idea, a poem, a story. In New York, from one street to the next, it’s an efficient route. You go from effective idea to effective idea. With one foot in each continent, we don’t really know where we are anymore, we find the apprehension and exhilaration of the first steps, and the sudden desire to embrace New York, as one embraces a beloved body.
Left or right? In the distance, a voice: “Follow the poetic itinerary. It will take you to 362 West 36th street, in front of The Re Gallery.”
The door is open. The artist is waiting for us.
By Odile Woesland
Available in bookshops everywhere on October 14th. Follow the line, published by Verlhac.
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
