Discover the contemporary work of Dubernet Joshua

on the "accidental", the fruit of the unconscious and perhaps also
on the alchemical relationship between man and matter.
What some have called in other times:
"the coefficient of charm."
It will therefore in no case be a question of an act
completely controlled, completely at premeditated fact, nor of a work
which would be the fruit of an expertise of a will defined beforehand,
of a craft.
It is not exactly a question of painting something beautiful
which would lead to a vain jubilation, but rather of realizing
a work sometimes of invocation, sometimes of conjuration.
Joshua Dubernet sometimes has the impression that certain portraits have
simply reached him, or that they have come about by themselves.
He is a bit like the spiritualist who enjoys disturbing
the peace of the dead.
He also sometimes paints Celia.
Celia the beautiful magician,
to keep her,
always near him
...

Portrait Series – A Mediumistic Exploration.

My work focuses on the female figure.

I am inspired by faces that I can come across

in everyday life. Sometimes at night.

I try to transcend simple representation

physical to reach a deeper level,

to open a window on the interiority of the subject,

to capture fragments of the soul.

Also, I consider myself more as

a medium than as a painter

(painting being the means and not the end)

I act as an intermediary between the world

tangible and more subtle dimensions,

imperceptible to the naked eye.

I apply myself to paint this famous

"invisible light" that some call the aura,

or rather the primordial intention of the subject,

its essence.

 

The woman, as a primordial subject:

 

When I see a woman

I am struck with amazement at the will

superior that wanted things this way,

sexual dismorphism.

This being neither at all made different from me

nor quite the same has always been

remained foreign, distant. And yet there.

 

I want to leave a document on this being

at once supernatural and familiar, as if

to grasp it, detached from all convention

or cultural influence or rather such

as Adam must have seen Eve for the first time.

 

À my work of a spiritual nature, therefore comes to

superimpose the erotic thing, but in

something both sophisticated and

rendered obsolete; a sort of derivation of the sexual act.

 

I paint the woman as a

"fortuitous and prodigious apparition"

The woman I paint is in this sense supernatural.

She is the receptacle and the point of arrival of what

we call desire. It is therefore for me, the subject

par excellence and by default, the primordial subject.

 

For me, a successful painting is a successful painting that would give

first and foremost would give the viewer

the desire to put a word on the feeling expressed here

but without succeeding, however, because as much as possible,

I try to paint feelings that I describe

as "transversal". Shock, fear, happiness, grace,

candor, contempt, stupefaction, love, melancholy;

all in a fixed emergence, an image,

a prime vision.

 

Emotion therefore, as a sort of prima materia with a view to sublimation,

my approach is therefore by mirror effect to arouse feelings

transversal in the spectator, not to leave the field

to something too narrative or hyper-intellectualized,

I concentrate well on the emergence of the subject,

I attach myself to the immutable, to the ether, to the divine.

 

 

Technical notes:

 

It is said in the language of birds

that magic is "the soul that acts."

Also; if my portraits seem rather neutral, inoperative

or even fallacious, during the day,

when night falls and those famous

industrial lights with which we all live come on,

they seem indeed to fester, to wear out perhaps;

in a certain way, to become operative, if not more efficient.

In my creative process, I rely heavily

on the "accidental", the fruit of the unconscious and perhaps also

on the alchemical relationship between man and matter.

What some have called in other times:

"the coefficient of charm."

It will therefore in no case be a question of an act

completely mastered, completely at premeditated fact, nor of a work

which would be the fruit of an expertise of a will defined beforehand,

of a craft.

It is not exactly a question of painting something beautiful

which would lead to a vain jubilation, but rather of realizing

a work sometimes of invocation, sometimes of conjuration.

 

I have this impression sometimes that certain portraits have

simply reached me, or that they happened.

I am a bit like the spiritualist who enjoys disturbing

the peace of the dead.

 

I also sometimes paint Celia.

Celia the beautiful magician,

to keep her,

always near me

...