Planets

Combining geometrical purity and gestural grandeur, Thierry W. Despont conjugates his architectural skills and painter s virtuosity in this spectacular collection of majestic, daunting and singularly attracting orbs, turning his struggle with corrosive materials and richly textured pigments into a spiritual achievement. A compound of restless collage and swirling pigments, each orb is animated by a life of its own: colorfoul magma breaking through the scorched surface of the canvas, white streaks flickering against the encroaching and abysmal darkness of a stark black background that seems about to engulf it. At the same time dynamic and mesmerizing, they are mysterious and numinous, intimate and remote; a lesson in the abstract sublime, they conjure up the immemorial awe of man in front of a cosmic world he both reveres and dreads. Beyond the eruptive, cataclysmic forces animating them, the orbs are inwardly radiant, animated by a life that seems to emerge from their depths, and conjure up a paradoxical harmony that embues them with an ultimate metaphysical dimension.