Sebastian (Hate-no-hama), 2023 Huile sur toile, Oil on canvas, 70 x 180 cm 27 1/2 x 70 7/8 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Derouillon, Paris© Grégory Copitet
Alex Foxton’s paintings are as cathartic as they are therapeutic. The ambiguity of his figures, the colours, the compositions and the narrative logic—also remind us of the fable of Abel and Cain that he has revisited—prevent any simplistic reading, and bring us face to face with the paradoxical violence that inhabits the acts of creating order. Here we find the artist’s fascination with images of young men conscripted into armies the world over, whose naivety and innocence can become the perfect fuel for fascist violence. The paintings, most of which are made up of several layers of other images, remind us, like a manuscript would, that the past informs the present—just as the present reconfigures the past, because the latter can only be read through the former—so all these scenes are rooted in our imaginations, ways of thinking, and upbringings: it does not go unnoticed to anyone that the protagonists are all boys. Chaos is also an inherent part of the method of composition, with the artist painting ‘on’ and ‘against’ ‘randomly prepared backgrounds,’ thus allowing an unconscious image to emerge.
These new works by Foxton take up these old dynamics within his work: a kind of exploration of masculinity and heroic figures, a questioning of the spatial, aesthetic, and symbolic role of color, keeping its distance from national narratives, and also a somewhat-thwarted declaration of love for older paintings. There seems to be a new perspective added to this, a desire to represent the scattered fragments of the world, violently thrown every which way, that people working with good intentions are still trying to weave back together, like Isis patching up the dismembered corpse of Osiris, or the tikkun olam of the Kabbalah. It is only by being patient and attentive with the world, despite the calls for destruction from any given side, that we will be able to purge the black bile that corrupts the hearts of men.
Swoon is on view through February 24th, 2024 at Galerie Derouillon, Etienne Marcel 13 rue de Turbigo, 75002