Jean-Marc Cerino FR, b. 1965

After having represented beings with his large white wax canvases—where representations of philosophers follow those of incarcerated individuals, homeless people, or residents of a psychiatric hospital—a mix of anonymous people and public figures. And where everyone, beyond their singularity and the recognition of their faces, is welcomed onto the same white background, distinguished by nothing, which creates community and functions, among other things, as the activation of a cum—with the color white giving a certain "tone" to this commonality. The paintings on glass by Jean-Marc Cerino represent the world seen through this commonality, by the totality of these singularities. Produced from photographs and drawings—mostly of anonymous individuals—this project is what the artist calls a shared view of the world. And they constitute a whole that could then be qualified as inexhaustible, or rather, infinite.

This is found formulated differently by Arlette Farge: "Jean-Marc Cerino also works on simple photos taken by anonymous people, thereby redoubling his certainty that something is happening there that was never seen, heard, or felt in this way. He paints 'after' [from], therefore he represents: his readjustment is his own, but there is nothing imaginary about it, for that would be to forget that everyone dialogues differently with the other, and that what matters lies in this incessant sharing (1)."

Through the technique of painting on and under glass, it is therefore a matter of reactivating, of bringing back to life in the present a part of the power of these archival documents. "Jean-Marc Cerino searches through details and loses himself in the reserves, the densities built up in layers or the pellucid veils of paint he obtains through dilution. The reverse side is painted in a second stage. The transferred image is thus revealed. The background will jointly provoke the coming into being and the dissolution of the representation (2)." The background that the image calls forth would also be the very background that swallows it up.

It is also a matter, through this body of paintings—where images of disasters and failures alternate with those of dreams and hope, the extraordinary and the ordinary—of affirming that the past is as much what took place as what was dreamed, and that the same applies to the present. And what comes "to superimpose itself on the mass of rubble or the annihilated blown away by the storm is, in spite of everything, and unrelated to hope—or else as faintly as a tiny glimmer—another wind, a strange breeze of lull (3)."

A body of work that was the subject of a book by Jean-Christophe Bailly (4) in which the author projects us into this way Jean-Marc Cerino has "of taking up photographs to awaken them, through painting, to their vanished meaning." "The melancholic power at work in this project also acts as a critical rereading of what History has left us in deposit, and through it, it is then the chance for an entirely new history painting" that is proposed (5).

(1) Arlette Farge in her text on Jean-Marc Cerino’s work. L’effraction de l’anonyme, exhibition catalogue, Erinnern, Musée de Göppingen & Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole édition, 2013.

(2) Anne Favier in a text for the exhibition Le réel, des rêves, un monde, Galerie Bernard Ceysson - Paris, 2013.

(3) Jean-Christophe Bailly in his text on Jean-Marc Cerino’s work L’effacement comme trace, exhibition catalogue, Le grain des jours, Musée des beaux-arts de Dôle et galerie Bernard Ceysson édition, 2014.

(4) La reprise et l'éveil : Essai sur l'oeuvre de Jean-Marc Cerino, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Éditions Macula, 2021.

(5) Jean-Louis Tissier, Un Essai sur l’œuvre de Jean-Marc Cerino par Jean-Christophe Bailly, En attendant Nadeau, April 14, 2021.