Rouge/Orange by Christian Vernier - 90cm x 90cm

“Total red — it’s a radical and courageous choice. Not red as a background, but red as an atmosphere, as a climate, as a permanent state of emergency. Within it float fragmented architectures — windows, facades, what look like houses seen from the front at the bottom — and in the upper right, this eruption of green and almost black violet, which is the painting’s only breath. The swirling central form is both solar and menacing, a gentle vortex. One thinks of De Staël for the materiality, of Chagall for the floating city, of Soulages in reverse — if Soulages had painted in red rather than black.”