Stéphane Tesson

Stéphane Tesson lives and works in Brittany (FR)

Imploding Mobile

André Breton’s definition of the image given to Pierre Reverdy — “The bringing together of two realities that are more or less distant. The further apart and more precise the relation between the two realities, the stronger the image will be” — defines the contemporary image so thoroughly that Jean-Luc Godard, when straddling the century in his Histoire(s) du cinéma, adopts it as a principle of general and generative resolution. Stéphane Tesson, clearly an image-maker as evidenced by the thick stacks of drafts on which pencil drawings follow one another alongside blank pages, willingly reverses this conception. Rather than bringing things together, he aggregates two realities. The combined elements merge, absorb one another, and soon become indistinguishable. The white space between the two images, which allows for suturing, disappears into a silent rebus, as Tesson notes when he places the vanishing point inside. One might wonder whether in these volumes that contain as many pristine versos as drawn rectos, the blank pages do not in fact represent completed images.

To the discount shop objects that insistently call out to the artist in search of a subject with the question “Why not paint,” Tesson responds with a negative question: “How can one not be disappointed?” A displaced question, or a method of drawing?

- Text by Jacques Norigeon, 2002

Stéphane Tesson’s work in on display during the exhibitions Authentiques Résidents, 2001 and Trabendo, 2003.