Prudence Dudan

In the beginning, there is the page. Filled with words and images, it is never white. Prudence Dudan marks it according to her mood: monotype, drawing, painting, collage... The choices are multiple, the gestures precise. They hide at the same time that they reveal the original content, which says something other than what was disguised. Clouds pass in front of a Greek goddess, a dune covers a Spanish vase, herbs escape from a Thai fish trap. Prudence Dudan collects beautiful and old books on various subjects, from kitchen kits to Courbet paintings. Each one provides her with a sufficiently dense repertoire for the mind and the hand to warm up, finding in the repetition of the motif, the easing of the gesture, the means of a gymnastics, a kind of active reading. The effort is weak because pleasure prevails, and things are arranged randomly as one makes a bouquet. Prudence Dudan improvises. In series and in color, she teases the surface of the borrowed supports with the malice of Baldessari, and the joy of Matisse. Her free associations divert the attention, and the object of study, taken out of its context, does not inform in the same way. Only the sum provides the meaning, which slips through his fingers, from the literal to the figurative. Tired of being seen from known angles, plants, chairs, glaciers, forks, shells undergo a metamorphosis. Because finally, his parallel encyclopedia invests the field of the dream.

Virginie Huet