There is a rude expression in English, used to suggest that a play or a film is irredeemably boring. We say it is “like watching paint dry”. And yet there is nothing more powerful than watching paint dry, or watching how a wash of pastel or ink moves across a surface, when the artist is as compelling in his themes and his processes as Enki Bilal. Who would not want to dwell on those dragged areas of colour, blues like corroded aluminium, stroked-in lines that for the moment maybe don’t represent anything recognisable, sudden irruptions of stronger tones? And while we watch, entranced, music is playing out that tells us something important. If there is a fundamental distinction in art it probably isn’t between the abstract and the representational (whatever that means) but between the abstract and the human, and it is the sound of Erik Truffaz’s trumpet, with Murcof’s insistent electronic heartbeat beneath it, that tells us we have not left the realm of the human. In fact, we’re moving hypnotically ever deeper into it.
There is a rude expression in English, used to suggest that a play or a film is irredeemably boring. We say it is “like watching paint dry”. And yet there is nothing more powerful than watching paint dry, or watching how a wash of pastel or ink moves across a surface, when the artist is as compelling in his themes and his processes as Enki Bilal. Who would not want to dwell on those dragged areas of colour, blues like corroded aluminium, stroked-in lines that for the moment maybe don’t represent anything recognisable, sudden irruptions of stronger tones? And while we watch, entranced, music is playing out that tells us something important. If there is a fundamental distinction in art it probably isn’t between the abstract and the representational (whatever that means) but between the abstract and the human, and it is the sound of Erik Truffaz’s trumpet, with Murcof’s insistent electronic heartbeat beneath it, that tells us we have not left the realm of the human. In fact, we’re moving hypnotically ever deeper into it.