Drift, 2023
A1: Nature morte à l’escargophone
A2: Un arbre à palabres
A3: Whisper from sky, nuit
In Yann Stéphane Biscaut's series Drift, different worlds from different times and geographical locations merge into hybrid dreamscapes. In the largest painting, un arbre à palabres (2023), ominous storm clouds with ghostly shadows meet sprawling fields with blue skies. Low-flying albatrosses stand almost entirely still in the midday heat, unclassifiable creatures fall from the balmy clouds of a prairie-like section, a horizontal line is interrupted in the middle of the picture. A rhythmic reading full of varying depths and textures is further enhanced by the uneven, padded ground. Categorizations are largely rejected in Biscaut's landscapes, an implied hybridity is further manifested through the surface between shaped canvas and sculpture.
Drawing on the research on diasporic culture of the Caribbean philosopher and writer Edouard Glissant and his understanding of the concept of créolisation, Yann Biscaut's painting opens a reflection on the clash of different realities within a geographical and spiritual journey of three stages. As the first stage, Biscaut understands the leaving of the birthplace followed by a journey in a more spiritual sense between the romanticization of the homeland left behind and the confrontation with social and cultural spaces of a new place. The focus of Biscaut's painting however lies in the last section of this journey, which speaks of an intermediate and spiritual space, between the original home place and an increasing anchorage in new geographical areas. Biscaut speaks of a dreamlike space made up of a plural culture that allows, in a state between delirium and imaginary, to renegotiate the processes of influence and transactions between cultures. In his landscape paintings, the artist draws from this dreamlike state between memory and fantasy, illuminating an intimate reflection on themes of rootedness, identity, and our understanding of place and time. Between landscape painting and shaped canvases, Drift thus not only makes direct reference to the history of the medium of painting, but also opens an intimate portrait of the artist himself and an approach to his own diasporic identity.
Marius Quiblier (translation P23)
Photo credits: Margot Sparkes