Ben Arpea: Brussels

Places are the guardians of our memory. They are the backdrops tinted with our emotions, the witnesses of a pact. We pass through them, leaving our mark in exchange for their memory, preserved within us like a remolded sanctuary. Ben Arpéa's painting is the luminous poem that, in few words, tells of our expressed need to reinvent. A necessity to revisit these landscapes that, having taken on an inner place, have transformed. The artist summarizes them with a phrase: "the places we no longer inhabit, the places that continue to inhabit us."

 

These magical, imaginary places also speak of forgetting. This mechanism, a companion to Time, which, in its passing, erases details, leaving only a raw, naive state. Irremediably, time flows by, and the places we once knew eventually disappear, leaving only their imprint within us as a dwelling. It is towards what remains, the essential, that the artist invites us to delve.

 

Painting is a re-writing, and Ben Arpéa gives it a secret language. Beneath the appearance of a simple, direct statement lies the complexity of the narrative. Through superimposed planes, the artist uses bold forms and colors to expand meaning. From then on, "landscapes become signs." Just as each surface interlocks, each work is a fragment that awakens a mystical feeling, that of sharing our memories. These landscapes, which never existed, we all know them. The scenes communicate with each other, echoing within us. Navigating this inner geography continues our reading of the prose. We no longer feel alone in the vast world of being. Ben Arpéa's work offers us a moment of serene appeasement. A feeling of eternity pervades us, extending into the open horizons. In silence, during those imprecise hours embodied by the implacable yellow sun, red sun, reminiscent of Etel Adnan's Arab Apocalypse, we are tossed about in perpetual twilight. The disk of light, caught in its course, reveals our desire. Its glow celebrates a life reflected in blue water, the curves of mauve hills, a bottle of purple wine shared by two. Our gaze, following that of the painter, passes through windows, guided by the lines of lavender fields and empty tennis courts. Turned outwards, these silent contemplations convey a final, nostalgic impulse. The flash of a sudden tremor, the announcement of an upcoming end, which Nicolas de Staël's words revive: "Before dying, the sun throws very vivid patches of light on the ground."

 

Knowing that everything passes, fades, and transforms before our eyes, Ben Arpéa's painting grants our wish that time stop in an immutable, idealized nature. The visible gives substance to the invisible. Reality feeds dreams. To translate these worlds onto canvas is to show that it is by reinventing oneself that one manages to build oneself. -- Eloïse Duguay