Things Seen and Unseen, le Pavé d'Orsay Communiqué de presse Il y a cette qualité du fait-main dans les panneaux d’aluminium peints par Richard van der Aa, avec ce soupçon d’imperfection que suggère une finition laissant libre cours à la spontanéité. Certes ces tableaux excipent certains traits propres au minimalisme, mais sa peinture non-objective ne sombre jamais dans la simple abstraction géométrique. Things seen and unseen est une série bi-chromatique inscrite dans la continuité des «objets trouvés» par van der Aa puisque cette nouvelle exposition évolue autour d’une série de «couleurs trouvées». Les correspondances entre couleurs puisent leur source dans le regard que van der Aa porte sur ces ambiances qui l’ont marqué en des temps et des lieux pourtant éloignés. Pas question donc pour cette série de figurer la représentation exacte des choses vraies ou encore d’être ces choses. En effet, ces panneaux ont plus à voir avec une réponse émotionnelle faite aux découvertes quotidiennes de l’artiste. L’ambiguïté que l’on retrouve dans chacune de ces œuvres et avec chacun des titres laisse le soin de remonter seul le long du lien signifiant, avec la faculté intacte d’y trouver une signification intime. Artist Statement There was a time when I would have said, and indeed probably did say, that my work is not about place. That it is unaffected by my physical surroundings and that it would take the same form where ever I happened to be located during the period of its creation. My thinking at the time was that the work is not a literal depiction of the world, or a window on to it, but rather an object made in response to it. Hence it is the result of my thought processes and my ways of knowing and those are things that don’t change. The work comes from within not without. It is about other, more esoteric realities than the visible world - spiritual things. That was many years ago, and as I am beginning to realise now, it was not the whole truth. Having lived in a number of different places since then, I am becoming aware that a sense of place subtly informs my work whether I am conscious of it or not. The work as it goes on can really be understood as a sort of mapping of my life. As self centred as this may seem, it really is a matter of course. I can only speak of what I know and what I know is the stuff of my everyday. The pairings of colours in the series “Things seen and unseen” have their origins in my observations of everyday situations and locations. They are details I have noted during my movements around Paris. Sometimes they are literal representations of those things and at other times they are an emotional response to the observation. My art may not be a literal depiction of place, but it is certainly informed by my experience of life in a place. The aesthetic flavour of a culture is taken on board almost by osmosis. Thus the mapping of my life becomes a mapping of a place in a broader sense.