Éponger la mer avec un mouchoir de poche - 2021
21,5 x 20,5 cm
Aquatint on organza

Photo ©Sara Labidi

Camille Truyffaut is undeniably a subtle and sensitive colourist of light. She explores how light affects the intensity, the texture, the surface of the canvas—or any support for that matter—as well as the objects, colours and the material she uses, and enters a relationship with them. Symbiotic. Often almost unnoticed, with a natural casualness. Intuitively structured within the space of the work, but on the other hand never forgetting the space as such in which the work is integrated. Like an almost unnoticed blink of the eye, like a delicate incidence of light fused with the space.

Éponger la mer avec un mouchoir de poche

Truyffaut’s works have not only an artistic, but also a lyrical power. Something she demonstrates amongst others through the titles of her exhibitions and her works. Thus the works with the expressive title Éponger la mer avec un mouchoir de poche (Sponging the Sea with a Handkerchief)—a title that sounds like a line from a poem—consist of some ten unique handkerchiefs aquatint-printed on organza. On the handkerchief we notice different shades of blue. A handkerchief, for that matter, is an object you use when you’ve run out of words. It refers to the moment words have become redundant and the handkerchief itself speaks. The way Truyffaut mounts these works to the wall not only makes obvious her choice for various sorts of lines—now horizontal, now vertical—but also causes the works to detach themselves of the wall on which they are mounted and ‘float’ in the space. The light that shines through them causes variegated moiré effects, as if your glance skims over the different transparent shapes and reflections of the light. In this way, the artist seems to capture the movement of the various shades of blue—a movement that depends on the print being lighter or darker—in a work that hangs still on the wall.

Part of a text written by Inge Braeckman.
Translation by Dirk Verbiest

The full text can be read: https://m21.gallery/en/exhibitions/camille-truyffaut